A 30,000-ruble fine was imposed on Sky Express recently for delaying a number of flights to the Czech Republic in March 2010, the spokesperson for Moscow public prosecution authorities for transportation reports. It has been determined that, in contradiction to the federal law regulations, the said airline had been scheduling international chartered flights and selling plane tickets without obtaining a permission to operate these flights first,’ the authorities’ report states. The air carrier’s actions resulted in a delay of two chartered flights (Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport – Pardubice, the

The international rating agency Standard & Poor's affirmed Norilsk Nickel’s long-term credit rating and its national scale rating at ВВВ- and ruAA+, respectively. The ratings were also taken off the CreditWatch list, with Negative rating outlook. The fact that the ratings are no longer on the CreditWatch list reflects the official statements the company’s management made to the extent that Norilsk Nickel is not going to suggest buying its shares out from UC RUSAL (which owns a 25% stake in the business) again; the rating agency also feels that the company’s financial performance

The second pilot sample of Granit (Series 2ES10), Russia’s only electric locomotive with an asynchronic tract gear created by Ural Locomotives (Sinara Group and Siemens’s joint venture) has been successfully tested at Sverdlovsk Region Railways in accordance with the technical requirements of Russian Railways Public Company. Head of Sverdlovsk Region Railways Alexei Mironov says the introduction of the new 2ES10 locomotive is particularly important for the coordination of heavy trains at West-Siberian, South-Ural, and Sverdlovsk Region Railways. Thanks to Granit, transit trains of 6,300 kg

The Finance magazine’s analysts drew up a rating of Russian banks’ reliability on the basis of the data available as of the first quarter of 2011. SKB-Bank was promoted by one position, with its reliability rating rising from B+ to BB-. This is the highest rating level reached by Sverdlovsk Region-based banks. The bank’s rating was calculated on the basis of formalized assessments of its assets and liabilities, its capital and liquidity, and on the basis of the qualitative evaluation of the non-financial information available. The rating was affected by such criteria as the dynamics, the

UTair Airlines is planning to close down its subsidiaries in Berezovsky, Noyabrsk, Taz, and Mys-Kamensk. The idea will be considered by the company’s supervisory board on May 27, 2011.

Egypt’s tourist industry is gradually recovering, but Russian holiday-makers appear to be taking their time in heading for the African country’s resorts: in April 2011, the number of Russian tourists in Egypt was 65% less than a year earlier, the director of Egyptian Consulate’s Travel Department Nahid Nazmy Ayad Hanna told RIA Novosti. According to the data, the drop came to 65% in April 2011 against April 2010. This means over 111,000 Russian tourists came to Egypt in April,’ she explained. The official did not specify, however, whether the figure covered only the last three weeks of April,

Rosaviation carried out an unscheduled inspection of NordWind to see whether the company complies with the existing aviation law. The commission was aimed at investigating the circumstances behind the cancellation and delays of 509 flights in the summer of 2010 and the winter of 2010/2011 as well as of flights operated between April 26, 2011 and May 7, 2011, the Association of Russian Tour Operators reports. The airline admitted it had delayed 112 flights due to technical problems, 160 flights because of the need to replace the aircraft or change the slot times, 434 flights due to the

The Finance magazine came up with a ranking of Russia’s largest banks in terms of asset profitability in the first quarter of 2011. The main rating criterion used was ROA, that is, the ratio of the pre-tax profit in the first quarter to the average asset volume in the same three months of the year. SKB-Bank, with its ROA at 3.52%, was among Russia’s top 20 most profitable banks and was given the 16th position on this list. What is more, the bank was rated the most profitable bank in Ural Federal District and second most profitable bank in Sverdlovsk Region. The bank’s net profit reached 712m

Acting Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Anatoly Gredin held a work meeting with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkey to Russia Aydin Sezgin. The diplomat arrived in the mid-Urals to take part in the Turkish Culture Days coordinated by Ural Federal University. Given the volumes of our mutual trade turnover and our investment cooperation potential, as well as the availability of direct flights between Sverdlovsk Region and Turkey, it’s time we set up a Turkish trade representation or a consulate in Yekaterinburg. This would allow us to build up on the business and

UT440, a flight from Tomsk to Moscow operated by UTair, was delayed in Tomsk Airport by five hours, the airport’s interactive announcement board states, according to RIA Novosti. According to the original timetable, the plane was to leave for Moscow at 7 AM local time (4 AM Moscow time), but the departure was put off until noon (9 AM Moscow time). The interactive announcement board only says that the security check has been completed. Tomsk Airport information center explains that the flight was delayed due to technical problems with the aircraft.

Gosstroynadzor (the state construction surveillance agency) experts and the representatives of Yekaterinburg municipal council as well as officials from the city’s district councils completed their examination of the sanitary condition of the local construction sites. Gosstroynadzor’s local division reports a number of developers have to fix things at once: RSU-37 must bring things to order at an apartment block site in Krasnolesye St, Uralmashstroy needs to work on an educational facility/underground garage site in Gagarin St and Botanicheskaya St, Stroytech has to take care of a shopping

Pufico is closing down its representation in Yekaterinburg without having met its customer obligations. The company’s show room, currently located at Gulliver furniture store, will work for one last day tomorrow, the company told UrBC reporters. We are going to call our customers and inform them of the closure tomorrow,’ Pufico reports. This Yekaterinburg furniture shop received some money in advance but never delivered the orders. Its customers have been struggling for a while now, trying to get the furniture or their money back. According to Pufico’s employees, a factory in Miass,

An Italian delegation is going to take part in the international exhibition and forum Innoprom 2011. The agreement to this extent was reached when a group of Yekaterinburg-based businesspeople visited Turin and Genoa. Vice President of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Union of Industrialists and Employers Mikhail Cherepanov joined the delegation to represent the union in Italy. The Russian delegates spoke to the representatives of Italian businesses than operate or have contacts in the mid-Urals (these businesses including ISCRA, SportlnGenova, WTC Genova, Bitron Industrie, Prima

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service took legal action against UC RUSAL Trading House as the Service suspects the company has abused its dominant position on the silicon market. The FAS looked into an application placed by a non-commercial partnership called the Union of Secondary Non-Ferrous Metallurgical Enterprises and now claims UC RUSAL Trading House violated Article 10 (part 1, paragraphs 3 and 5) of the Federal Competition Protection Act, to wit: UC RUSAL Trading House infringes upon its contractor disadvantageous terms of agreement, or the terms unrelated to the agreement proper. The

Alexei Kalinichenko, who was extradited from Morocco, will only arrive in Yekaterinburg tomorrow, Ural Federal District’s division of the Internal Affairs Department informed UrBC. The detainee is currently staying in Moscow. In Russia, Alexei Kalinichenko is suspected of setting up a pyramid scheme called Global Gaming Expo and of appropriating over 1bn RUR worth of Russian citizens’ private savings. The suspect’s business had to do with trading on Forex through an offshore company Livingston Investment as well as through Yekaterinburg-based Bank24.ru (in fact, Alexei Kalinichenko was one of

Ural Airlines recently introduced a scheduled international flight from Yekaterinburg to Kyiv and back. The first flight took over a hundred passengers on board, with all of them receiving gifts like company-logo chocolates and diaries. The flights will be operated once a week, every Wednesday, using an A320 airplane. This is a direct flight, which saves a lot of time (the flight only takes three hours and twenty minutes). In addition, as far as the south-bound destinations are concerned, the company also offers its passengers flights from Yekaterinburg to Sochi, Baku, Yerevan, Tashkent,

The second pilot version of Granit, Russia’s only asynchronic traction drive locomotive (Series 2ES10) that was developed at Sinara Group’s Russian-German joint venture Ural Locomotives has been tested successfully at Sverdlovsk Region Railways. The five-thousand-kilometer drive was targeted at checking the electric locomotive’s performance in the real-world operations conditions. On its first trip, Granit 002 took a 7,000-ton train from Yekaterinburg to Pervouralsk.

The international rating agency Fitch Ratings promoted the credit rating of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK). The company’s long-term Issuer Default Rating was increased from BB to BB+, whereas its long-term national scale rating went up from АА- (rus) to АА (rus), with Stable rating outlook. Fitch Ratings reports the improvement in the ratings indicates the completion of large-scale investment projects for the year 2011, namely, Mill 2000 and the metallurgical facility ММК-Аtakas in Turkey), which makes the company’s position of a value-added goods manufacturer significantly

An annual general meeting of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) stockholders was held in Magnitogorsk recently. The shareholders decided to declare a dividend of 0.33 RUR per one ordinary share for the year 2010. They also decided that MMK Management Company should no longer be the sole executive body and that these powers should be relegated to MMK Director-General. The person elected for the position was Boris Dubrovsky, MMK press service reports. Boris A. Dubrovsky was born in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, on November 22, 1958. He graduated from Magnitogorsk Mining &

The first 3,000 tons of hot-rolled sheets have been produced at the steel-smelting facility of MMK-Atakas, an iron and steel works, MMK (Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works) reports. The facility is expected to reach its projected capacity by the end of the year, so as soon as in January 2012, MMK-Atakas will be producing 200,000 tons of hot-rolled stock every month. According to MMK forecasts, the works will have manufactured over 800,000 tons of goods by the end of 2011. The iron and steel works in Iskenderun is fitted with the most advanced and hi tech machinery available to the