A new head office of Sberbank’s Ural branch will be put up at the intersection of Kuibyshev St., Rosa Luxemburg St., and Gogol St. - right in the center of the city.

The symbolic beginning of the construction process took place on June 27, 2007 when Head of Sberbank’s Ural branch Vladimir Cherkashin and Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy placed a time capsule in the foundation. The ceremony was attended by Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturiye Vikentiy, Deputy Mayors Vladimir Kritskiy, Alexander Lyashenko, and Alexander Yakob, Head of the Central Bank of Russia in Sverdlovsk Region Sergey Sorvin, and Chair of the Union of Ural Bankers Valentina Muranova.

'Sberbank has been working hard on expanding its subsidiary network. We set up dozens of new offices in the Urals every year. This new office will employ the most advanced banking technologies, which is going to make our customer service even better and speedier. I hope our clients will enjoy coming to this nice beautiful building,’ Mr. Cherksahin said.

'The new office is to be built in compliance with the highest international standards. The project was designed by Skanska East Europe OY (a Finnish company) and Mosproekt. Hansa Stroy is going to become the general contractor. The bank will have to invest over 2 billion RUR from its own resources, with the construction to be finished in the middle of 2009,’ the bank’s press release says.

'This office is important not only in terms of banking services: the building will also complete the architectural ensemble downtown and is definitely going to make Yekaterinburg a more beautiful place to live in,’ Mayor Arkadiy Chernetskiy announced in the course of the capsule-laying ceremony.