OREANDA-NEWS. January 18, 2010. The Russian Bank for Development and ZAO UniCredit Bank have signed a Special Purpose Loan Agreement within the framework of implementation of the SME Lending Support Program, reported the press-centre of RBD.

Pursuant to the agreement the allocated resources will be channeled to finance SME lending support programs of UniCredit Bank. RBD’s resources will be granted to the clients of UniCredit Bank representing small and medium-sized business both via its head office and via a network of subsidiaries in the following regions: the Voronezh Oblast, the Krasnodar Krai, Moscow, the Novosibirsk Oblast, the Rostov Oblast, Samara, St.Petersburg and the Chelyabinsk Oblast. Information on the SME Lending Support program is available on the RBD web-site.

“UniCredit Bank is intensifying SME lending support, - Mikhail Alekseev, CEO of UniCredit Bank says, - and this Agreement is an important part of the project for development of this business segment. It will enable our current and future customers to get access to the public SME lending support via UniCredit Bank. Special lending terms under the Program will unconditionally form a stable foundation for developing existing and creating new areas of business of our customers in the current intricate economic situation”.

On his part Sergey Krjukov, Chairman of the Board of RBD noted that the list of partner-banks under the Program was supplemented not only by one of the major and reliable banks with a European name but by an owner of the Banking License №1. “These factors integrated with a European approach, two decades of work experience in Russia and rich traditions of small business lending will contribute greatly to the Program’s implementation and to SME development”, - S. Krjukov accentuated.