Yekaterinburg commercial estate market’s major problem at the moment is that a balance needs to be struck between the realty introduced and the demand backed by the adequate paying capacity. Despite the bankers’ claims to the contrary, the lending practice has not fully recovered yet. For one, no loans are offered for project financing. The buildings that do get finished in Yekaterinburg right now are the ones that were projected and planned long ago. Virtually no new projects are being launched,’ plenipotentiary representative of the Management Companies & Developers Guild in

Uralsvyazinform, a telecommunications provider and a member of Svyazinvest Holding, handed its debtors (nearly 100,000 subscribers) to the international debt-collecting agency Lindorff. The agency is already cooperating with Rostelecom that is to unite all the smaller members of Svyazinvest in one month’s time,’ ComNews.ru reports. Uralsvyazinform and Lindorff signed their contract in December 2010. The list of debtors was given in to the agency in a few stages, in January and early February. ‘This is going to be a long-term cooperation, which means the operator will be transferring the

Yekaterinburg’s public prosecution authorities checked whether the preparatory jobs for the construction of a building in Zoologicheskaya St-Repin St-Volgogradskaya St-Serafima Deryabina St in Yekaterinburg are actually legal. The authorities detected some violations of the tree-felling regulations in the allotment in question. Yekaterinburg city council allowed OOO Torgovy Center to fell 1,161 trees, but this permission had legal flaws in it as it did not agree with the Green Area Regulations: no reasons were given for the need to fell the trees, no special expert examination took place. Nor

Eight business centers with the total area of 285,600 sq m are to be commissioned in Yekaterinburg this year, including four Class A centers (total area 221,600 sq m) and four Class B centers (total area 64,000 sq m). The news was announced at a meeting headed by Vice Mayor of Yekaterinburg for Consumer Market Viktor Konteev. Last year, five new buildings with the total area of 93,000 sq m were to have been commissioned; in reality, however, only one building was actually launched, that is, Voznesensky Business Center (Class A, total area 23,200 sq m) at 18 Pervomayskaya St. Among the

Sergey Zyryanov, Councilor to Governor of Sverdlovsk Region, was recently appointed the General Director of Uralsevergaz. The decision to this extent was made at the company’s extraordinary general meeting in Yekaterinburg on February 22, 2011. Former GD Vladimir Kuzyushin was promoted to Vice President of ITERA Group.

Chairman of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Board of Directors Viktor Rashnikov won the international prize Person of the Year 2010. The prize was founded by RBC Group in 2001. It is primarily aimed at bringing into the limelight the people who made the most significant impact on Russia’s development and promoting work for the good of the country. Each prize winner is selected by a board of experts comprising Russian politicians, economists, heads of large enterprises and cultural elite representatives. Viktor Rashnkov was nominated Person of the Year 2010 in the Businessman of the