Panasonic has been negotiating with the retail chains selling consumer electronics and home appliances, reports RBC daily. Last week, Eldorado retail chain resumed buying Panasonic goods after the Russian representation of the Japanese company paid the store a $50,000 compensation for the price difference of plasma screens in MediaMarkt and Eldorado. The other retailers appear to be reluctant to buy Panasonic produce in the nearest future, yet they do say their negotiations are in full progress. On December 6, 2006, the top executives of Russia’s leading retail chains (EuroSet, Svyaznoy,

‘BusinessManCenter office center has no building permission,’ the employee of Town Planning Surveillance Inspectorate Irina Snegireva said to UrBC representative. ‘The construction of this building is totally unauthorized, since BusinessManCenter only was allowed to do the building and assembly jobs, and not put up the whole building – this permission requires a separate set of documents,’ Ms Snigireva said. UrBC’s sources report that apart from having no permission, the launch of the project has already been delayed by a year. Besides, the owners of the would-be offices were asked to pay

Now that the holiday season is almost there, MegaFon Ural, the mobile operator, has come up with the special offer for those who would like to greet their loved ones using their USSD service. This offer includes some interesting compliments, wishes, and toasts that can be easily edited, completed with names and sent as text messages to relatives and friends.

The Russian Federation Federal Financial Market Service annulled the licenses of the professional player on the securities market issued to Ural Transport Bank and Variant Invest Broker Financial Company entitling them to performing depositary operations and brokerage and dealership, respectively.

‘The current state of events at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd. is really not good for its creditors. Should the plant abandon its financial liabilities, UralTransBank will certainly get its money back in the end, but this is not going to be the money they need here and now. Cases like this are becoming more and more common nowadays, when a client chooses the bank rather than a bank chooses a client,’ says Director of Bic Link Vladimir Alyabiev Following the attempted introduction of the new management team at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd., its creditors now find themselves in a

‘We need to develop and implement the mechanism for paying the regional small businesses some compensation to partly cover their trademark and service designation registering expenses and expenses occasioned by undergoing pre-certification procedures. This is very important now that Russia is about to enter the WTO,’ says First Deputy Minister for Economic Development of Chelyabinsk Region Elena Mursina. ‘Next year, we’ll carry on developing the micro-credit schemes. In addition, there will be introduced a business ‘incubator’ that will become part of the innovational activity network in

According to the data provided by UralLeague Commercial Bank and available at the website of the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by the bank to nongovernmental commercial organizations for a term of over three years went down by 13.23% (from 14.550m RUR to 12.625m RUR) in January-October 2006. Citation and other forms of public usage of presented information are permitted only if accompanied by a clear reference to UralBusinessConsulting.

‘Pulling down some old buildings (like the one at 22 Khokhryakov St. ) is one of the most common ways of destroying historic artefacts in Yekaterinburg,’ the inspector of the All-Russian Society for Protection of Cultural Heritage in Sverdlovsk Region Anna Dementieva said to UrBC representative about the recent demolition of the building by Noviy Grad, the local developer. ‘This house was on the regional scheduled monuments list, even though it actually hadn’t existed for a few years already,’ Ms Dementieva said. ‘Yet it was illegal to put up any buildings in the vicinity of the monument,

‘The criminal suit of IrtyshHydroSpetsStroy (part of Noviy Grad, the developer) was placed with public prosecution bodies of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region,’ Deputy Public Prosecutor of Khanty-Mansiysk inter-district public prosecution body Rinat Muratov said to UrBC representative. ‘This case is the one of economic nature and requires a very thorough investigation that has to be carried out at the level of the Region,’ Mr Muratov said. IrtyshHydroSpetsStroy (part of Noviy Grad) is accused of doing construction work without proper permissions and papers. ‘The violations mostly have to do

‘Most claims and complaints we get concern the financial services offered by Home Credit and Finance Bank Ltd. Most often, this is the consumer loan business: some banks, for example, give a loan and make a client open an account that costs pretty much the amount of money you borrow to maintain,’ says Ms E. Bogacheva, the expert of Rospotrebnadzor in Sverdlovsk Region, the consumer rights monitoring agency. Home Credit and Finance Bank Ltd. was prosecuted for administrative offence for refusing to provide a loan unless a client pays for the opening and maintenance of a bank account. This

Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia held a solemn awarding ceremony for the winners of Small Business Leader 2006. The applications for the contest could be submitted between July 1 and September 30, 3006 by small businesses and sole traders who had an account in Sberbank or opened it within the contest period. The competition was held in all the areas where the bank has its subsidiaries – Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Kurgan Regions, and in the Republic of Bashkortostan.

‘It’s not very likely that the new management of Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd. is going to abandon its financial liabilities; however, given the current state of events, the creditors (UralTransBank in particular) will try to get rid of the plant’s debts by selling them,’ General Director of Blagodat Securities Vsevolod Chaschin said to UrBC representative. Due to some significant personnel changes at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd., its creditors have found themselves in a strait: neither the structure nor the management of the company has been settled yet. Nor is anyone aware of

The Board of Directors of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Board of Directors of SKB-Bank held meetings on December 12, 2006. ‘This was a very significant event for the banking business of Sverdlovsk Region. The Board of Directors of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development approved of becoming the shareholder of SKB-Bank and decided to give us a line of credit for financing small and medium-scale businesses,’ said Chairman of SKB-Bank Mikhail Khodorovskiy. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development decided to support the bank’s plans to expand its

Russian Copper Company won a tender for the development of Kyzyl-Dere deposit in Akhtinskiy area of Dagestan. The company’s management is currently considering putting up an ore mining and processing plant in this republic, reports the spokesperson for Dagestan’s Representation under the President of the Russian Federation. President of Dagestan Mukhu Aliev met the management of Russian Copper Company in Moscow to discuss the construction plans. According to Mr Aliev, Russian Copper Company will receive some support in exchange for some social development projects and complying with the

Based on the report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affected the health of Sverdlovsk Region population in 2005, A.K. Serov Metallurgical Plant was among the companies that dumped the greatest amount of manufacturing water into the local rivers and lands. The plant alone dumped 4.06m cubic meters of manufacturing water. The liquids left over after the ferrous metallurgical production affect the water greatly and lead to its reduced quality everywhere. Thus, the regional rivers and lakes got 202,200 tons of organic substances, 49 tons of mineral oil, 3,143,900

The state of events at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant makes things very complicated for its creditors. ‘From the legal viewpoint, loans are given to a particular legal entity and not to the company’s General Director; this is why this legal entity must be held responsible for their financial liabilities. The banks are trying to minimize the risk of not getting their money back through collaterals and guarantees. However, the credit record of Yekaterinburg meatpacking plant is not very good, so, given the existing risks, the creditors might insist on the early repayment of the debt as they

Based on the report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affected the health of Sverdlovsk Region population in 2005, three subsidiaries of UralElectroMed (Nevyanskiy mine, Safyanovsk Copper, and Polymetallic Production) produced 9,910,400 tons of waste varying from class 1 to class 4 in terms of being environmentally hazardous, and only 6,613,900 tons were actually recycled. These subsidiaries hit the region’s top ten non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises in terms of waste production. There are 75 non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region

The recent meeting of the committee set up to coordinate the top-priority national projects in Sverdlovsk Region was devoted to the issue of providing some state backup of construction projects. As a result, the Russian Federation Government received applications for state guarantees for 2007 (that may come to over 2bn RUR) regarding three residential areas: Academic project of Yekaterinburg and two areas in Kamensk-Uralskiy and Revda. The new district is to appear in the south-west of Yekaterinburg and is expected to occupy 2,500 hectares of land, with 1,200 hectares covered by forests and

According to the press officer of Ural Airlines, the company is going to hold the Best Flight Attendant competition on December 15, 2006. This event is aimed at motivating and encouraging the personnel whose skills and competence comply with the most demanding professional requirements. The first tour of the competition took place at the end of November when 20 participants were selected among the company’s flight attendants based on their application forms. The second tour of the selection process resulted in choosing 6 candidates by a committee made up of very experiences instructors.

‘The best part of complaints we get about banks have to do with issuance of loans and credit cards. A lot of such claims concern the credit cards provided by Russian Standard and Home Credit Ltd. to their bona fide borrowers,’ reports Chairman of Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee Andrei Artemyev. ‘Home Credit Ltd., for example, gave one of its clients a credit card with a 40,000 RUR limit and informed them that insurance was the obligatory part of the deal. The sum of the insurance payment was withdrawn from this credit card account. In a few months, the client owed the bank something