Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is planning to buy less electric power from its suppliers and support its own electricity production within the framework of its anti-crisis package, the enterprise’s BOD Chairman Viktor Rashnikov said. MMK’s PR Department reports the company used to be able to fully provide for its electricity needs as recently as a few years ago, but, after a series of new production facilities were launched (including an arc-furnace shop), about 200 megawatts had to be purchased from outside suppliers. Now that the general production output has gone down, MMK’s

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of private individuals’ deposits and other investments in Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 368 million RUR, or 14.75% (from 2,498,898,000 RUR to 2,130,191,000 RUR) in October 2008.

‘Bank Severnaya Kazna’s acquisition by Alfa Bank can be considered a good buy. The latter has been trying to attract some investment resources for business development for several years now. They did this trough bonded loans, but the sums thus obtained were not too impressive, whereas the interest rate was high enough,’ says Unicom Partner Investment & Finance Company’s Deputy GD for Corporate Consulting Dmitriy Zemerov. Bank Severnaya Kazna sold its controlling shareholding to Alfa Bank, Alfa Bank’s official statement featured via Bank Severnaya Kazna’s website reports. ‘One can say that

Starting October 8, 2008, Ural Airlines is to operate more Yekaterinburg-Khabarovsk flights. These will now be available two times a week and are to be operated using an A 320 airplane, the company’s press officer reports. The plane leaves Yekaterinburg at 9.20 PM every Monday and Friday and arrives in Khabarovsk at 10.40 AM on Tuesdays and Saturdays, respectively. Then, the plane tales off in Khabarovsk at 12.40 AM on Tuesdays and Saturdays and lands in Yekaterinburg at 5.20 PM. There is a stop in Novosibirsk on the way.

‘This isn’t the first time we’re going through a crisis, and so we more or less know what to do. We actually take the standard steps like reviewing our operational and capital expenses and cutting back on or canceling out the unnecessary ones, as well as making our managerial teams more efficient,’ Pipe Metallurgical Company’s General Director Alexander Shiryaev said in the course of his interview to Vedomosti. ‘For one, we will have to give up the idea of putting up a steel-smelting complex at Tagmet in Taganrog and the FQM continuous mill at Severskiy plant in 2009. Instead, the better part

‘The opening ceremony of the five-star hotel has been scheduled for the second half of December 2008 when al the necessary documents hopefully get processed by the state board of experts,’ the spokesperson for Hyatt Regency Ekaterinburg explained to an UrBC reporter. However, the hotel management reported earlier that the opening would take place on December 1, 2008.