A millionth ton of goods generated by plate mill 5000 was produced in the sheet-rolling shop No. 9 of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (ММК) during a night shift on September 13, 2010. The ‘anniversary’ batch of К60 (Х70) metal was meant for Vyksunskiy metallurgical plant, a member of United Metallurgical Company. Mill 5000 is the key component of MMK’s plate iron facility that also comprises an out-of-furnace processing unit and a continuous casting machine. MMK signed a contract for the delivery of the equipment with SMS-Demag, a German machine-building concern, in November 2006. The

Chelyabinsk Region Ministry for Economic Development and the Governor Administration are going to work on changing the region’s image both country-wide and on the international arena. Following a staff meeting, Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevitch explained the challenge: ‘This region is often associated with the accident at Mayak Corporation and nuclear waste. The thing is, the accident occurred many years ago, and all its impact has been localized long since. The amount of pollutants the enterprises based in the South Urals are now discharging and dumping is ten times less than

Sverdlovsk Region’s Public Prosecutor stated that the premises of Venta (a Nizhnyaya Tura-based machine building plant estimated at dozens of millions in the national currency) had been sold at a price that only amounted to one-tenth of their actual worth. As a result, some serious damage was done to the company. The officers of Nizhnyaya Tura Internal Affairs Administration’s Economic Offense Department had been investigating the incident for a quite a while, but the legally valid procedural response was only made after the regional public prosecution authorities got involved. Following the

Two French architects applied to Yekaterinburg city council, asking for help on their noteworthy project – a description of cities and districts that have proved the most advanced in the environmental and urban development aspects. In Russia, the architects were enticed by Yekaterinburg’s new Academic district. Besides, they are planning to visit and report on Shanghai, Vancouver, South Korea’s Songdu, and Japan’s Kitakyushu. The main idea behind these trips is to see, comprehend, and analyze each urban project and to share the experience. Upon the completion of the tour, a report on the

OAO Alfa-Bank bought out all the shares of OAO Bank Severnaya Kazna that it hadn’t previously owned yet, thus increasing its stake from 95.03099% to 100%, Alfa-Bank Yekaterinburg branch’s PR Director Anna Gorobtsova informed UrBC. ‘The buyout was completed in full compliance with the legal requirements and at a market price that was actually higher than the price Alfa-Bank purchased the stock at during the buyout offer launch,’ she said. Alfa-Bank offered to buy the shares out from Bank Severnaya Kazna’s other stockholders at the end of March 2010; the suggested price was 0.000256497 kopecks

Bank Koltso Urala’s business customers have recently set yet another record as the bank’s business customers’ deposits volume reached the point of 3.5 billion RUR. This means the figure has gone up by 1.5 billion RUR in less than three months. The bank’s Deposits Department’s employees report this impressive volume growth is primarily caused by the local entrepreneurs’ enhanced business activity.

The international rating agency’s estimate is that 25% of loans issued by Russian banks are bad debt; this coincides with the agency’s basic forecast produced about a year ago, Fitch’s Financial Institutions Senior Director Alexander Danilov announced at a press conference on Thursday, RIA Novosti says. The agency’s year-old worst case scenario predicted the share of toxic assets might rise to 40%. ‘We are now in our basis scenario zone given the off-balance-sheet transactions and restructured debts,’ Danilov said. Fitch believes the banks gained more control over the bad debt problem in the