The share of metal goods delivered by Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) onto domestic market went up to 69% of the total shipments volume last year. ‘For reasons of geographical proximity and good growth potential, we see the home market as our priority and a strategically important one,’ says MMK BOD Chairman Viktor Rashnikov. The company kept on building up on its metal goods sales in Russia for the last few years. While MMK only sold 36% of its produce domestically in 1999 and shipped 64% abroad, already in 2005 its home sales exceeded the export shipments for the first time. In

S7 Group airlines Siberia and Globus rendered their services to 412,260 passengers in January 2011, which was actually 1.9% less than a year earlier, S7 press service reports. The decrease in the number of passenger has to do with the fact that that the Group stopped using four transcontinental Airbus A310 planes fit for 255 people; this was part of the company’s fleet upgrades program. S7 Airlines is currently using thirty-nine aircraft whose average age comes to eight years. The company’s passenger turnover amounted to 915,175,000 passenger-kilometers, its passenger load factor came to 68%,

OAO Rosbank reports some forged bank guarantees are used in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk by unidentified swindlers. ‘It is reported that increasingly more forged bank guarantees are used to deceive people. The trick works like this: swindlers offer the Russian and foreign businesses representatives fictitious bank guarantees for a certain commission off the total amount. The papers involve figures of up to ?250m’ the bank warns. For one, the forgers are said to be operating in such Russian cities as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Irkutsk, Perm, Ulyanovsk, Yekaterinburg, and Yaroslavl

Microsoft Corporation reports the entire product range will grow a bit more expensive starting March 1, 2011. The company decided to use Russian roubles for all the transactions in the Russian Federation. The conversion of prices into the national currency with a fixed exchange rate will mean all products will go up in price 12%. The rise will involve such box offers as FPP and most corporate licensing products like Open, Open Value, Open Value Subscription, Enterprise Agreement, and Enterprise Agreement Subscription The prospective price-rise date has been set for March 1, 2011.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court turned down the request of Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Strong Drinks Market Surveillance Service (Rosalcoholuregulirovaniye) to annul the license of Yekaterinburg wine and champagne producer. The division required that the company’s license be annulled after an inspection of the business. The agency then halted the company’s activity. In fact, similar restrictive measures were taken by Rosalcoholuregulirovaniye in respect of Sredneuralksy wine plant, but the claim was dismissed by the court in this case as well.