Thirty-two students and faculty members from Technical University of Vienna took a tour of Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) today. The would-be graduates of Austria’s largest college major in industrial construction; this is why they were particularly interested to see the corporate buildings and facilities that are currently being renovated. The visitors also examined the converter shop, where four continuous-casting machines have been assembled in less than ten years; three of these machines were actually put up in cooperation with Voest-Alpine

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of credits given by UralTransBank to nongovernmental commercial organizations for a term of 91 to 180 days has gone down by 51% (from 278,905,000 RUR to 137,109,000 RUR) throughout January to July 2006.

Since the beginning of the year, Ural Airlines have impressively xtended their booking office network from 19 to 100 offices. New booking offices were set up in the retail outlets of Euroset and Salon SMS, two mobile phone traders, in a number of small towns in Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, and Perm Regions. These offices offer tickets for domestic flights and flights performed within the boundaries of the NIS.

A carriage loaded with iron ore derailed at Podvoloshnaya-Pervouralsk railway haul (local division of Sverdlovsk Railway) on August 26, 2006. In order to eliminate the consequences of the accident, all operations on the even rail had to be closed for 4 hours and 17 minutes. The odd rail operated as usual. The recovery operations caused a twenty-one-hour delay of eighteen freight trains and an almost seven-and a half-hour delay of seven passenger trains. To find out the causes of the accident, the expert team had to use special tools to examine the technical condition of the carriages, the

Sales Department of Yekaterinburg Electrical Network Company collected over 5 million RUR following theft reports, says the company’s spokesperson. The department officers carried out 568 investigations of legal entities and found instances of illegal use of electricity in 146 cases. They also found such instances in 67 cases out of 240 investigations of natural persons. Since the beginning of the year, the officers from the Economic Safety Department have managed to retrieve approximately 5 million RUR from previously unregistered users onto the corporate accounts. Such ‘freelance’ users are

Ural Plant of Rubber Technical Goods JSC held extraordinary general meeting that resulted in electing the new Board of Directors: the shareholders elected GD Sergey Zyryanov, First Deputy GD Viktor Sentsov, and Commercial Director Vadim Ovsyannikov. These people are said to have connections with Renova Group. Interboss Holding Ltd. bought some of the company’s shares from Russian Credit Bank of Moscow in July 2006 and now owns a 50.4% share holding. Another 38% are owned publicly (they belong to Russian Federal Property Fund that has already tried selling the holding twice). The remaining 12%

Mechel Bank JSC changed its natural person dollar deposit rates of interest and terms. As the company’s spokesperson said to UrBC representative, the bank raised the interest rates from .5% to 2% for 61-days Vacation deposit, 91-days Vacation deposit, Time deposit, Savings deposit, Pawnbroker deposit, Capital deposit, VIP-Deposit, Specific Child deposit, Retirement deposit, and Your Success deposit. According to the bank employees, this decision was caused by the general trend on the banking services market. The bank has already raised its ruble deposit rates of interest: this happened in

Mineral-Chemical Company EuroChem JSC (Moscow) that deals in agricultural chemical fertilizers has sent Zinc Plant of Chelyabinsk JSC a long-term contract offer. EuroChem management is willing to buy a fixed annual amount of sulfuric acid at a fixed price for the next five years. The approximate annual amount is estimated at 100,000 tons, the spokesperson for PROMASS, the Organization of Employers of Chelyabinsk Region, said to UrBC representative. ‘We have indeed received such an offer, and we are now considering it,’ the press secretary of Zinc Plant of Chelyabinsk Mikhail Bendyak observed.