Inkombank creditors will meet on May 19, a member of the temporary management team said.

Creditors are currently gathering information on the bank's ability to repay its debt, he said. They are considering electing regional representatives to take part in a general meeting in Moscow.

Actions against the bank have been suspended in all regions except St. Petersburg, where authorities continue to seize and liquidate Inkombank assets. The temporary management announced that this activity is illegal.

Temporary manager Vladimir Alekseyev said earlier that Inkombank assets, as of January 1, amounted to 37.8 billion rubles and the bank's debt was 41.3 billion rubles.

More than 240,000 private creditors and 25,000 corporate creditors had been identified by the end of March. 135,000 individuals and 9,500 corporate creditors have filed claims. The bank's 60 foreign creditors account for nearly 30 percent of total claims against the bank.

A Moscow court will consider the bankruptcy status of Inkombank on May 27.

SBS-Agro received part of the next tranche of a stabilization loan estimated to be worth 5 billion rubles, a bank source said. The SBS-Agro press service, however, declined to comment.

In early March, the Central Bank board of directors decided to continue to support SBS-Agro. Accordingly, the bank received the first 2.5 billion rubles last autumn under a stabilization loan the total amount of which has not been disclosed.

Standard & Poor's lowered its rating from CC to D for Rossiyskiy Kredit bank $500 million medium-term notes issued by Rossiyskiy Kredit Securities B.V. A D-level rating signifies a default status.

The downgrade removed the two issues from CreditWatch.

Standard & Poor's decided to downgrade after Rossiyskiy Kredit failed to meet a $10.25 million interest payment on a $200 million Eurobond on March 29. The Eurobonds were issued at a rate of LIBOR+4 percent and are to mature in 2000.

The bank decided to refrain from paying the coupon to avoid disruptions in a restructuring process, which is being monitored by foreign creditors.

Rossiyskiy Kredit also owes $125 million on a syndicated loan provided by 40 foreign banks in August 1997, and further amounts on trade financing and forward contracts.

Promstroibank has recovered 1.5 billion rubles in loans outstanding - or one third of its loan portfolio - since the financial crisis began last August, bank head Yakov Dubenetsky told reporters.

The money was used to pay depositors who chose not to transfer their accounts to state savings bank Sberbank, and for tax payments.

Dubenetsky dismissed reports that the bank had received a loan from the Central Bank.

A decision has yet to be made on a syndicated loan provided by foreign banks, he said. But several solutions to the problem are being considered, he added.

Promstroibank is considering the possibility of restructuring as a Russian Development Bank. If this plan goes through, "the bank will find a way to survive," he said.

One option they are not considering is creating a new bank and transferring liquid assets to the new entity, as several Russian banks have done, including Unexim bank.

Nizhny Novgorod's NBD Bank signed a loan agreement with the U.S.-Russia investment fund TUSRIF under which the bank will provide micro-credits to small businesses and private entrepreneurs.

The first tranche of the loan will be $250,000, Yevgeny Maksakov, the bank's head of corporate finance, said.

NBD Bank will continue a similar lending program that it began four years ago with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he said.

In future, the bank plans to sign another agreement with TUSRIF on a program to provide credits for automobile purchases.