The meeting of Saint Petersburg municipal council resulted in the decision to give Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) the status of their strategic investor. This status touches upon the enterprise’s project involving the construction of a pressings-making plant and a maintenance metal goods center in Kolpino. These facilities will be located on the premises of Izhorskiye Zavody where the area of forty-eight hectares has been provided to put up a modern car parts producing plant in 2010 or 2011. The examination conducted by Saint Petersburg Investments and Strategic Projects

Russian Expo Arms — 2008 и Russian Defence Expo — 2008 exhibitions were opened at the firing ground located by Staratel settlement in the vicinity of Nizhniy Tagil on July 9, 2008. Both events are supported by SKB-Bank as usual. The annual exhibitions attract more and more participants and visitors every year. This year, over 400 Russian and foreign enterprises are expected to take part in the event, and over 60,000 people are expected to visit the fairs. In addition, business executives from forty-seven different countries will probably pay a visit, SKB-Bank’s press officer reports. The

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Uralfinance to state-run for-profit organizations for 31 to 90 days went down by 23.07% (from 53.95 million RUR to 41.5 million RUR) in January-May 2008.

Oleg Cherepanov, a Yekaterinburg-based entrepreneur, has recently announced he’s sold NOVA-Group and launched a new business project. NOVA-Group started working on several construction projects in Yekaterinburg in 2006. During his first visit to Sverdlovsk Region, First Deputy Head of Russian Federation Government and the country’s future President Dmitriy Medvedev visited some of NOVA-Group’s premises and discussed the prospects and challenges of the building industry with Oleg Cherepanov. NOVA Group eventually reached new quality heights in the course of its development, so Saint

Starting August 1, 2008, Ural Airlines will operate an extra Yekaterinburg-Salekhard-Nadym-Salekhard-Yekaterinburg flight on Fridays in addition to the other two weekly flights. ‘This route is very popular with passengers flying to and back from their vacations as well as with business travelers, so we decided to raise the number of flights we offer,’ the airline’s press officer reports. Now the flights are available every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday: flight U6 505 takes off in Yekaterinburg at 8.55 AM and arrives in Salekhard at 11.50 AM, then the plane leaves Salekhard at 12.40 PM and

Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC) does not provide any financing for the construction of Demidov Business Center in Yekaterinburg, Demidov’s press officer Oleg Zemtsov says. UMMC declared its rights over the business center, developed by Klaas-Stroy, on May 29, 2008. The company’s experts say they bought 550 million RUR worth of loan agreements from one of Klaas-Stroy’s shareholders; besides, an agreement to acquire 50% of Klaas-Stroy’s shares was reached. ‘UMMC has not officially reported their acquisition of Klaas-Stroy’s shares yet. What is more, we haven’t seen any of the