‘We cannot provide any comments at the moment; no sales agreement has been signed so far, and I believe the whole thing might take up to a month to get through with,’ says Demidov Business Center’s press officer Oleg Zemtsov. In the meantime, Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company (UMMC) is rumored to have bought 50% of KlaasStroy’s shares (the latter being Demidov’s current developer). The business center’s representatives denied any chance of their signing a contract with UMMC as early as July 8, 2008. They claimed UMMC was not investing anything in the construction process and never

Bread and bakery products keep growing increasingly expensive in Sverdlovsk Region: Yekaterinburg’s bread-making plant reported white bread was to go up by 4% and would be sold for 20.55 RUR per kilogram. Bread made of mixed flour would grow 5% more expensive and would be available for 19.73 RUR per kilogram (compared with the earlier price of 18.8 RUR). The bakery plants located in the region’s other towns followed suit. The bread-makers claim the price increase is brought about by greater production costs. At the same time, the increase must also have to do with the lifting of the wheat and

Russian banks did not set up any new subsidiaries in June 2008 but managed to build up on their authorized capital at the same time. The Bank of Russia reports 1,125 banks with a total of 3,940 subsidiaries operated in Russia on July 1, 2008. Their total authorized capital amounted to 787 billion RUR on July 1, 2008 compared with 780 billion RUR on June 1, 2008, 731 billion on January 1, 2008, 761 billion RUR in March 2008, and 775 billion RUR in May 2008. According to the Bank of Russia, the banks’ distribution density has remained the same over the last few months. Sverdlovsk Region, for

According to the National Managers’ League’s profitability ranking of unit investment trusts as of July 16, 2008, the share price of LUKoil Fund (Uralsib Management Company) has gone down by 19.35% since the beginning of the year.

A number of Yekaterinburg’s private clinics are uniting to fight for their right to become a part of the obligatory medical insurance system, General Director of Babur Medical Center Igor Ivanenko says. ‘We decided to work together on the new scheme of rendering medical services. Private clinics (dealing in a variety of services) are to cooperate with one another, which means a patient will be entitled to a whole range of medical services, including primary health care, expert and hi-tech medical care, and transportation services,’ he explains. Igor Ivanenko claims the idea of a united system

‘8,775 foreign citizens have had to face administrative liability for violating the foreign worker regime in Sverdlovsk Region since the beginning of the year. 584 people were working without a license. 390 employers violated the foreign worker employment regulations. Some 130 people were deported from Russia, and over 26 million RUR worth of fines were imposed,’ Head of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Migration Service Igor Semochkin announced at a press conference.

Yekaterinburgnefteprodukt and LukoilPermnefteprodukt were found guilty of violating the federal legislation on the protection of competition, Sverdlovsk Region’s Federal Antimonopoly Service’s department director Yulia Anisimova said to UrBC. The two companies have been sued for a price collusion that involved AI 76 (80), AI 95 (96), and diesel fuel. The collusion lasted from January 1, 2007 to March 27, 2008. ‘These are two different organizations, so they work with different oil product suppliers; they have different transportation and storage terms, and so on. This is why they couldn’t

The federal statisticians report 485,400 square meters of housing were put up in Sverdlovsk Region in January-June 2008, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier by 22.8%. 5,168 apartments have been put up altogether (compared with 4,216 apartments in January-June 2007). Twenty-five municipalities, including Yekaterinburg, Asbest, Sysertskiy district, Beloyarskiy district, and Nevyanskiy district, did particularly well and managed to raise their housing construction output by 1.3, 2.4, 2, 1.4, and 2.1 times, respectively. The region’s dwellers managed to have 278,600 square meters worth

Koltsovo airport of Yekaterinburg offers some of Russia’s priciest jet fuel. In fact, the price went up by over 30% in just one year and now comes to 30,600 RUR per ton or 37,194 RUR per ton if you count the price of the filling and maintenance. This is more than Moscow-based Domodedovo or airports based next to health resorts like Sochi, Anapa, and Mineralniye Vody charge their customers. The soaring prices have already made the plane tickets more expensive, with the fuel fee sometimes coming to 20% of the price of a vacation in Turkey or Europe. Consequently, some tourist destinations have

Sberbank of Russia’s Uchalinskiy division is financing the construction of a dairy farm in Urazovo, Uchalinskiy Region. This is Agrofirma Bairamgul’s investment project and part of the national priority program on the development of Russia’s agro-industry. Sberbank has already contributed 86 million RUR to the building and assembly jobs and intends to invest a total of 626 million RUR in the project. Sberbank’s Ural branch has been sponsoring some projects under the program on the development of Russia’s agro-industry since 2006. The bank has offered various agricultural enterprises a total