OAO UTair Airline denies any allegations as to the company being offered for sale. ‘The rumors that the air carrier is now offered for sale have no factual grounds whatsoever: we are not planning on selling the business either in parts or as a whole, and not one of UTair’s managers took part in any negotiations to this extent,’ the airline says. Meanwhile, Kommersant carried an article on the company’s prospective sale. For one, the newspaper claimed the airline was negotiating with five potential buyers, among whom were Moscow Government, Lufthansa, Aeroflot, and Siberia Airlines.

VUZ-Bank (Life Financial Group’s asset) BOD decided not to distribute any profit for the year 2009 because no profit whatsoever was actually made last year. The bank’s Board of Directors suggested that the shareholders also decide not to pay any dividends for 2009 at the AGM. The final decision will be taken and the annual general meeting on May 21, 2010.

The BOD of Yekaterinburg-based oil plant suggested that the stockholders vote for passing last year’s dividends at the upcoming AGM. The stockholders’ annual general meeting has been scheduled for May 31, 2010. Apart from the issue of the dividends, the shareholders will also have to consider profit and loss distribution in the financial year 2009 and to approve a number of agreements signed with the framework of the loan at interest taken from OOO RusAgro Group.

OAO LSR Group, whose business activity involves a number of projects in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Region, might end up attracting some $100m less than expected in the course of its SPO. In fact, at the close of the sign-up session, the Group had to reduce the stock price by over 12%, that is, down to $8.5 to $9.5 per GDR, Vedomosti reports. So OAO LSR, Saint Petersburg’s major builder, declared that GDRs would be offered to the investors at $8.5 to $9.5 per receipt or at $42.5 to $47.5 per share (one share being equal to five GDRs). The total amount of investment should thus reach $667m, with

Sverdlovsk Region Government, Yekaterinburg Municipal Council, and RUDEA (the Russian-German energy agency) signed a cooperation agreement. The agreement provides for the three parties’ long-term and mutually beneficent cooperation in the field of energy-saving and energy efficiency in Sverdlovsk Region and Yekaterinburg. The agreement also covers a number of investment projects. The paper was signed by the region’s Communal Housing Services Minister Yuri Shevelev, Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg for Communal Housing Services and Housing Policy Konstantin Krynin, and RUDEA’s General Director

Yekaterinburg dwellers who have been oppressed by ZAO Russian Standard Bank can now call a hot line number provided by the local division of Russia’s Young Lawyers. The number is +7 (343) 362-83-06, the organization’s representative in Ural Federal District Evgeniy Ryakin said to an UrBC reporter. ‘This hot line will be available for as long as will be necessary; we intend to deal with calls and institute legal proceedings against the bank,’ he explained. Ryakin reports the hot line was organized in order to prevent the scenario of Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region. Now Nizhniy Tagil’s

Sverdlovsk Region Court supported the verdict of Yekaterinburg Leninskiy District Court returned on March 4, 2010. The district court declared that, based on the evidence provided by the prosecution, the accused, a Yekaterinburg-based firm’s trustee in bankruptcy Zurab Kharbediya, should be sentenced to two years in a penal settlement. Kharbediya was found guilty of abuse of power (Article 201 (part 2) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code). It was determined that Zurab Kharbediya used his authority to organize the company’s bankruptcy proceedings for financial fraud. Namely, two

The national rating agency is about to recall OAO AKB Avangard’s credit rating as the two parties’ agreement expired on April 16, 2010. RusRating is one of the national rating agencies whose ratings are used by the Bank of Russia to assess the banks’ business solvency.

OAO Bank Petrovskiy Board of Directors decided not to pay the dividend for the year 2009 on common registered or preferred registered stock.

Jones Lang LaSalle came up with a report on the state of the Russian commercial estate market in the first quarter of 2010. The company says that, after a quick rise at the end of last year, the demand for the shopping areas in the Russian malls has remained the same. Moscow’s shopping malls are still more popular than the provincial ones, so the retail trade turnover went up by 2.7% in the Russian capital and only by 0.8% in the rest of Russia in January-March 2010 (compared with January-March 2009). ‘Even though retailers have been showing more interest in renting lately, the share of

The trade union of UC RUSAL’s Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) is to carry out a protest picket in front of the municipal prosecution authorities’ office on April 30, 2010. The protesters’ main demand is that the prosecutor Dmitriy Famutdinov leave office after he failed to respond to the violation of workers’ rights, the Independent Trade Union of Russian Miners reports. The protesters are planning to hold banners with slogans like, ‘RUSAL! Do respect workers’ rights and interests!’, ‘Let’s protect trade union activists! United Russia! Do vote FOR changes in Labor Code’s Article 374!’,

MTS, one of Russia’s Big Three mobile operators, is going to lay off workers in its Ural branch. UrBC found out that about forty local employees have already received letters notifying them of the redundancies. MTS announced early in March 2010 that the Ural branch’s call center would be relocated from Yekaterinburg to Samara in order to reduce the company’s outgoings. The workers were informed about the changes two months before these changes came into full effect. MTS’s Ural branch currently employs about 600 people.

On May 15, 2010, the StartupPoint forum will be held in Yekaterinburg for the first time in order to provide a communication platform for the local investors and startup companies. The event is supported by SKB Kontur (the federal IT company), AKSIT Association, and IT-eburg website. The forum is to take place in the Moskovskaya Gorka Hotel at 131 Moskovskaya St at 2:00 PM. StartupPoint is open to all the startups willing to interest the potential investors in their projects, and it’s absolutely free. The only thing a company has to do is apply for the forum in advance and be willing to

The annual general meeting of LSR Group’s OAO Betfor concrete goods plant’s shareholders resulted in the decision not to pay the dividend for the year 2009 on the plant’s type A ordinary registered shares or preference registered shares. In addition, the stockholders decided that the BOD members were not getting any end-of-year bonuses.

The Kinofox cinema’s equipment was confiscated after the company had demonstrated Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, and The Book of Eli motion pictures to its audience without paying anything to the soundtrack composers, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities reports. OOO Kinofox is based in Kamensk-Uralskiy, Sverdlovsk Region. It was revealed that the movie theater had not been paying to the composers of music for Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, Alvin & The Chipmunks-2, Black Lightning and The Book of Eli since December 2009. The films were demonstrated to the viewers on

According to the findings of a research carried out by Rospotrebnadzor, the federal consumer rights watchdog, forty-two people developed chronic work-related illnesses in Yekaterinburg last year, which means every 0.7 people in 10,000 became ill. This number was 1.4 times greater than that for the year 2008, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor reports. As far as Yekaterinburg goes, these are the machine-building and the construction industries that pose the greatest health hazards to the workers. The number of employees with work-related illnesses was the

OAO The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals Corporation called off the opening of its Yekaterinburg office that had been announced earlier. The corporation has recently relocated its HQ from Moscow to Yekaterinburg’s Atrium Palace Hotel. Apart from this, the company also cancelled the press conference for Chairman of the corporation’s Supervisory Board Alexander Beletskiy. The press conference was supposed to have taken place on April 26, 2010.

Yekaterinburg Customs instituted legal proceedings against a local trading company that deals in the import of toys. The administrative lawsuit’s charges are based on Article 14.10 of the Russian Federation (copyright infringement). The customs officers from the intellectual property rights protection department inspected the goods and declared that 2,160 children’s mobile phones bearing Disney Princess trademark (the trademark owner being the U.S.-based Disney) were actually counterfeits. Upon this finding, the customs officials contacted the trademark owner’s official representative in

Yekaterinburg radio equipment plant’s Board of Directors suggested that the shareholders do not declare any dividends for 2009, the company reports. The annual general meeting is to take place in Yekaterinburg on June 26, 2010.

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) came up with a performance report for 2009. The state of the company’s financial affairs looks a bit bleak: despite EBITDA growing by 84% in the second half of 2009 against the first half, this performance indicator was still below expected and below the market consensus, Bank of Moscow’s Analytical Department reports. ‘The main reason why TMK’s actual results are so different from our forecasts is that the company’s North American division finished the year off with $5m worth of EBITDA losses (in fact, at the end of the first half of 2009 the loss figures