‘Nizhneserginskiy Hardware Plant (part of Maxi Group) might actually have to close down due to lack of working assets,’ Maxi Group’s PR Director Alexander Popov said to UrBC.

Maxi Group CEO Nikolai Maximov has already applied to Russian President Vladimir Putin for state support, since the company owes some 38 billion RUR to about fifty banks, whereas the banks themselves refuse to go for refinancing because of a recent financial crisis in the U.S. Mr. Maximov says Maxi Group has to spend all of its working assets on debt payments, which has been affecting their production quite badly (that is, they are experiencing stoppages and run the risk of redundancies). According to Mr. Maximov, state support is the only way for the business to survive.

'We’ve paid back to our creditors four billion RUR over the last two years and, since the banks refuse to go for refinancing, we have virtually no money at all. We sometimes have to use only one furnace instead of two; if things stay the way they are, we’ll just have to make a number of people redundant,’ Alexander Popov notes.