Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won in the first municipal landscaping contest. The competition was held for the industrial, building, and production enterprises; these were assessed on the basis of their premises’ landscaping and site finishing level, the beauty of lawns of flower beds, recreational development, the availability and cleanliness of parking lots and rubbish bins, the exterior of the buildings, the design of a business’s sign plates and adverts, and the company’s participation in Magnitogorsk’s environmental and urban development programs. All the contestants had to

The construction of the battery room’s casing was completed by SUBRStroy at Novo-Kalyinskaya mine of Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR). The site is currently occupied by the experts of RUS Engineering now that the subcontractors have done their job. Says RUS Engineering’s site foreman Nikolai Vdovkin: ‘I’d say we have plenty of work to do. Right now we are busy assembling the central heating and communication systems and finishing out the interior. Next week, the heating will be launched, and by the end of December, we’ll have had the battery room commissioned. This is bound to be a grand

Sberbank of Russia’s Ural branch has issued three million bank cards by December 2008, with over 700,000 cards offered to customers in 2008 alone. Sberbank of Russia issues and deals with MasterCard and Visa cards as well as Sbercart, the Russian system. ‘The increase in the number of cards is accompanied by the dynamic expansion of servicing infrastructure. For one, thee bank runs over 900 cash terminals, 1,675 ATMs, and 462 information & transaction terminals in all the areas of its economic presence. This means our customers can get their cash, top up their bank card account, and make

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (ChTPZ Group’s largest tube and pipe manufacturers) supplied their consumers with 1.45 million tons of tubular goods in January-November 2008, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 1.756 million tons) by 17%. ChTPZ sold 773,200 tons of tubes and pipes in eleven months of the year, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 973,800 tons) by 21%. These figures include 379,300 tons of large-diameter pipes. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant delivered 35,700 tons of tubular goods to

Ural Airlines keeps implementing its aircraft upgrade and replacement program; the carrier has recently leased one more Airbus A320 which is nine years old and used to be driven by ClikAir (the Spanish low-cost airline and Iberia’s daughter enterprise). Prior to handing the airplane over to Ural Airlines, the aircraft had undergone a two-month preparation. Airbus was painted the new owner’s corporate colors; the inside of the plane and the luggage area were fully replaced, and the older standard seats were substituted by 162 improved REСARO leather armchairs, the spokesperson for Ural

Rus-Bank-Ural started paying compensation to Kurgan-based Kurganprombank’s depositors on December 11, 2008. This was made possible after the Deposit Insurance Agency declared that Rus-Bank was the winner among all the potential agent banks that would be involved in making compensation payments to the customers of Kurganprombank. Kurganprombank was had joined in the deposit insurance system and had its license annulled on November 27, 2008. This was seen as an insured event in accordance with the federal bill on the insurance of private individuals’ deposits in Russian Federation’s banks. The