UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 2, 2010. The travel agents who cooperated with Capital Tours tour operator are now suffering losses. Capital Tours’ problems began on November 15 when Russia’s major tour operator’s accounts were frozen by the creditor banks, so the company was unable to provide for the trips booked by its customers. Capital Tours could be saved through capital investment (some $15m were needed), and there actually were some investors who offered the money to the company. One such investor was the International Financial Club Bank controlled by Mikhail Prokhorov. The bank offered

UrBC, Moscow, December 3, 2010. Bank Uralsib, which is controlled by Nikolai Tsvetkov and has recently made its ownership structure simpler, is going to find a strategic investor of UniCredit or Raiffeisen range or launch an IPO. No other options are available to large private banks because of growing competition with the state-run organizations, the bank reports. However, Russian stockholders are still planning to sell their assets at pre-recession prices, while foreign investors are no longer willing to pay such prices at all, Kommersant refers to a number of experts as saying. ‘Uralsib

Just like a year earlier, the dwellers of Yekaterinburg are evaluating the city in terms of its strong and weak points that could attract or put off high-profile visitors to the place. The Urals’ capital was listed among the cities that will host the world football championship in 2018. There are thirteen cities on the list altogether: Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Kazan, Saransk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Sochi, and Yekaterinburg. The matches will be played at the Central Stadium which will be fully restored next year. The public feels

The world football championship matches will be played in twelve Russian cities, with Yekaterinburg as a reserve place, head of Russian Football Union’s press service Andrei Malosolov told United Russia’s official web portal. ‘The cities which are to host the championship in 2018 have already been selected. The so-called clusters, namely, one in the North-West, one in the Volga Region, the Central one, and the one in the South, have already been determined. The clusters comprise twelve city plus Yekaterinburg as a reserve. These cities are Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl,

UrBC, Moscow, December 2, 2010. ‘The foods delivered to Russia by Valio, a Finnish company, raise increasingly more concerns from Rospotrebnadzor,’ RIA Novosti quotes head of the state consumer rights watchdog Gennady Onischenko as saying. ‘The melted cheese packs imported from Finland by Valio, a company that is associated with the market economy and good quality in Russia, unfortunately come to look more and more suspicious,’ Onischenko said. The executive explained the worries had to do with the use of some exotic oils in the production of the cheese in question; he did not specify what

The certificate-issuing company Germanischer Lloyd provided OAO Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) with a certificate that proves the enterprise’s Mill5000-manufactured shipbuilding steel’s compliance with the certificating body’s standards. The unique plate Mill5000 was launched at MMK in July 2009; the unit’s capacity comes to 1.5 million tons of steel a year; its produce was meant for the shipbuilding industry as well as some others. The mill’s technological characteristics make it possible to manufacture things for the oil platforms stationed in the Arctic Regions and for the