ProjectFinance magazine declared the agreement on financing the construction of MMK Atakaş the Deal of the Year. The magazine says that, although many metallurgical projects had to be cancelled or put off last year, the sponsors of this one – the Russian Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) and the Turkish Atakaş concentrated all their efforts on implementing the project. What is more, the financing of MMK Atakaş was organized under quite advantageous terms, despite the global liquidity crisis at the time. This agreement has a lot of symbolic importance for the metallurgical industry

The sales of new automobiles in Yekaterinburg dropped by about 60% last year, Head of Yekaterinburg Commodities Market Committee Viktor Konteev’s press secretary Ilona Starodubtseva reports. At the same time, the sales of second-hand cars delivered to Russia from Japanese and European auctions plummeted by 90% in 2009 compared to 2008. In addition, the number of show rooms in Yekaterinburg decreased from 53 to 50; out of the three centers that closed down two used to sell Russian cars and one dealt in foreign ones.

‘Sverdlovsk Region is a special region in terms of its development, given particularly the number of locals who fly abroad. Our task is to make Yekaterinburg an easy-to-reach city. All the airplanes we buy can operate flights to any destination on the globe, and we are planning to get some long-distance aircraft like Airbus A330 or Boeing 767 that will make it possible to travel non-stop to places like Japan. I am positive that these plans will be carried out,’ General Director of Ural Airlines Sergey Skuratov said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘We launched a scheduled flight to

Following a rock burst at UC RUSAL’s Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR), an ad hoc committee checked all the mines for compliance with the security regulations and found now serious damage. All mines are operating as usual at the moment, SUBR’s official representative Roman Lukichev informed UrBC. The rock burst occurred at Krasnaya Shapochka mine at 8:40 AM on February 13, 2010. The mine was closed at the time, so no one was hurt. No damage was done to the nearby towns of Severouralsk, Kalya Tretiy Severniy, or Cheremukhovo, either.

OAO National Bank Trust is going to close down its subsidiaries in Ryazan and Irkutsk, with the branches transferred into the category of the bank’s Lipetsk and Barnaul subsidiaries’ retail outlets, respectively. Therefore the bank’s BOD ruled that Chairman of the Supervisory Board should place all the necessary papers with the Central Bank of the Russian Federation’s head office in Moscow as well as with the Central Bank’s divisions in Lipetsk and Irkutsk Regions. National Bank Trust says nothing about the future of its Yekaterinburg office so far.

‘Experts are growing increasingly pessimistic about The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals (a large-scale project on the industrial development of the Urals’ north). The project has been around for five years already and could now come to a halt unless some effective measures are taken. It is essential for the ad hoc work team to control all the field operations,’ General Director of OAO Siberian Scientific Analysis Center Anatoly Brekhuntsov announced at a recent meeting. The meeting was aimed at assessing the implementation of the all-round exploration work scheme for the Northern, the