‘The legal action against Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR) hasn’t been going very smoothly so far. I am not satisfied with the professionalism of our judge, which is why I decided not to come to the hearings so as to keep the application officially unconsidered. This means I will be able to place another application and have my case handled by a different judge,’ Chairman of UC RUSAL SUBR’s independent trade union of miners Valeriy Zolotarev said to UrBC reporters. Meanwhile, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Russia’s Independent Trade Union of Miners’

A solemn opening ceremony of SKB-Bank’s new office in Cherkessk took place on November 27, 2009. The ceremony was attended by President of Karachayevo-Cherkess Republic Boris Ebzeyev. As a matter of fact, SKB-Bank set up an outlet in Cherkessk as early as three years ago, but the office used to operate as a representation only and couldn’t serve anyone except for businesses. Now SKB-Bank’s office works as a universal bank offering a full range of banking services to both private individuals and legal entities. ‘The locals are quite familiar with our bank already. They will be happy to become

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank (SGB) recently proved the Urals’ leading bank in terms of private individuals’ deposits growth. The bank actually topped the regional rating for Russian banks in January-September 2009 published by Bankir.ru The volume of private individuals’ deposits amounted to more than 9 billion RUR on October 1, 2009. This means the figure has gone up by 70% since the beginning of the year, thus making SGB Ural Region’s No.1 in this respect. This incredible increase in the private individuals’ deposit volume has secured the bank the 66th position in the country-wide rating as

Governor of Yaroslavl Region Sergey Vakhrukov and President of RENOVA-StroyGroup Veniamin Golubitskiy recently signed an agreement of intent regarding a multi-faceted area development project. The project is expected to speed up the construction of a new district in Yaroslavl called Yabloneviy Posad. The project provides for multi-faceted development of the city’s Dzerzhinskiy area, with putting up a number of apartment buildings, a set of town houses, and some buildings pertaining to the social infrastructure. The new district will meet all the standards of a modern, comfortable, and safe

‘The opening of Greenwich Shopping Center’s third extension will only take place on December 17, 2009. This is the final and unchangeable date. The earlier dates that we had set for November 2009 had to be positponed due to unfinished construction process,’ Director of Greenwich Shopping Center Dmitriy Sarapultsev said to UrBC. In fact, the opening date was first set for November 1, 2009 and then for November 26, 2009. The new extension’s area comes to 101,000 sq m; this, added to the existing 53,000 sq m of the older buildings, will give Greenwich Shopping Center a total area of 154,000 sq m.

RU-CENTER turned down the request of Talisman, the Urals-based language school chain, for a Russian language-based domain despite the fact that Talisman is a registered trademark belonging to the applicant. The domain center claims the language school’s application can’t be accepted because the registered domain name must reproduce the trademark in Cyrillic alphabet very precisely, symbol for symbol. ‘The fact that we haven’ been allowed to register a Cyrillic domain was not a real blow to the company’s management. We only wanted to use the domain талисман.рф as a second web address mirroring

A meeting of Rostourism Hotel Certification Committee took place in Moscow on Thursday. The committee members considered the applications of hotels wishing to get into two-, three-, four-, and five-star categories. For one, Tymen-based Eurasia Business Hotel and Yekaterinburg-based Angelo Airport Hotel were given the four-star status and Yekaterinburg-based Green Park Hotel and Sverdlovsk Congress Hotel got 3 stars each.

All the issues related to upgrading Sverdlovsk Region-based Reftinskaya power station (Enel OGK-5) and introducing the new ways of storing and recycling production waste were dealt with at a recent meeting chaired by the deputy of region’s Legislative Assembly’s House of Representatives Nikolai Krupin. The meeting was attended by mayors of Asbest, Berezovskiy, Malyshev, Reftinskiy, and Sukhoi Log, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Energy and Communal Housing Services reports. ‘The power station is currently transferring all the pulp into its second ash disposal area, but

NOMOS-BANK recently confirmed the fact that they co-invested some money in Vladimir Frolov’s new banking project – a settlement bank. According to NOMOS-BANK, the settlement bank will be based on the existing URAN Commercial Bank; the Central Bank of Russia has already agreed to the acquisition of the latter by the investors. NOMOS-BANK is going to buy a majority shareholding in URAN, while Vladimir Frolov is buying a blocking shareholding,’ the bank reports. According to Kommersant, NOMOS-BANK now owns 75% of URAN Commercial Bank. Actually, the bank will probably be renamed, so its services

MMK AtakaşMetalurjiSanayi, TicaretveLimanIsletmeciligi A.S (MMK Atakaş, the asset of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works) signed a long-term financing agreement with a number of crediting organizations recently. The financing is needed to put up an integrated metallurgical works in Turkey and the accompanying infrastructure. The construction began in October 2007 and will probably have been completed by the end of 2010. The project’s estimated capacity comes to 2.3 million tons of flat rolled stock a year; the produce will be delivered onto both the domestic and the export markets.

According to the statistics for January-September 2009, Yekaterinburg is Russia’s third largest foreign cars market, with 25,610 foreign vehicles sold in these nine months. This figure was only beaten by Moscow and Saint Petersburg, AVTOSTAT agency says in its monthly report on the country’s automobile market. All in all, the sales of foreign cars in Yekaterinburg decreased by nearly 60% in January-September 2009 compared to January-September 2008. Chevrolet, whose share of the local foreign cars market came to 13.4%, was Yekaterinburg’s No.1 bestseller, while Toyota’s share dropped from

2,700 flights operated by Russian airlines were delayed by over two hours between July 3, 2009 and November 20, 2009. In 1,184 cases, it was the carrier’s fault, Rosaviation reports. The top five companies whose flights were delayed most often were Siberia, with its 136 delayed flights, Transaero, with its 97 delayed flights, Vladivostok Avia, with its 74 delayed flights, Sky Express, with its 61 delayed flights, and Utair, with its 60 delayed flights. Aeroflot was actually given the seventh position on this list. All in all, Russian carriers were responsible for the delay of 1,500 flights in

The network electricity supplier announced the results of its performance in 2008; the report was compiled in accordance with the International Accounting Standards. According to this report, the company’s revenues came to 41,593.4 million RUR in 2008, which was 9.4% better than in 2007. The expenses amounted to 40,239.8 million RUR last year, which was 13.1% more than in 2007. MRSK Urala made 1,356.2 million RUR in terms of sales profit in 2008. This figure was actually 44.8% lower than the one reached in 2007. The company’s profitability index in this respect was thus registered at 3.3%.

Former BOD Chairman of Bank Severnaya Kazna (now belonging to Alfa-Bank) Vladimir Frolov became the BOD Chairman of URAN Commercial Bank. The news has been announced via the company’s official website. In fact, UrBC maintained as early as September 2009 that Frolov was going to use URAN to start up a new financial project; this claim has therefore been officially proved now. The Board of Directors now comprises seven members, including Andrei V. Frolov. Ural Commercial Bank was set up in February 1992 in Sorochinsk, Orenburg Region. In January 2005, the bank became a member of the obligatory

Russia’s Federal Financial Market Service turned down Yekaterinburg-based Uralfinance Commercial Bank’s application for a dealing operations license on November 25, 2009.

Microsoft looked into the results of its software piracy monitoring program and came up with a comparative report on a number of Russian regions. According to this report, about 70% out of 3,000 retail outlets inspected by the company representatives in fifty-three Russian cities only sell licenses software products, whereas 14% of stores might offer their customers pre-installed counterfeited software, the company’s press service says. As for Ural Federal District, the scale of software piracy was the greatest in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, with 30% to 50% of computer shops openly

Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Market Service coordinated a scheduled inspection of Uralvagonzavodskiy Retirement Fund. Following the inspection, a letter ordering the fund’s management to eliminate the existing violations of the law and to take measures aimed at preventing these violations in the future was sent to the company.

The premises of a Yekaterinburg-based food depot (namely, the land allotment and some office buildings) worth 19 million RUR have recently been arrested by the officers of the court, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Service of Court Officers reports. ‘Our district division is now handling the enforcement proceedings based on a warrant issued by Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court. The warrant states that the debtor must pay 16,317,000 RUR to Express Market Plus. Besides, another warrant issued by this court states that the food depot must pay 20,002,000 RUR to

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service is to resume the hearing of the case involving Yekaterinburg subsidiaries of ROSBANK and Standard-Reserve, the insurance company, on November 24, 2009. The two companies might be charged with violating the Federal Competition Protection Act 135 FZ (Article 11, part 1). The final decision should be taken by the next day. The bank and the insurer are suspected of colluding in a manner that could impose disadvantageous contract terms upon their customers. The thing is, the insurer agreed to pay the insurance compensation to the

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service is currently handling the case of Gazpromneft-Ural and Lukoil-Permnefteprodukt; the two oil companies have allegedly introduced monopolistically high gasoline prices As far as Lukoil-Permnefteprodukt is concerned, the company is suspected of setting and maintaining sky-high prices for AI-80, AI-92, and AI-95 gasoline and for diesel fuel in Yekaterinburg since November 1, 2008. Gazpromneft-Ural is suspected of doing the same in Yekaterinburg, Nizhniy Tagil, Rezh, and Kamensk-Uralskiy.