Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) spent over 52m RUR on employee training programs in the first half of 2011. 6,584 employees underwent various professional development, re-training, and additional vocation programs at MMK in the six months of this year; 3,157 people out of these are workers and 3,427 people are managers, experts, and clerks. Most workers (1,649 people) attended specific courses, 790 people underwent re-training programs, 169 people attended vocational courses, 304 people went to advanced learning programs, and 245 employees obtained a second vocation,’ MMK reports.

Ural Airlines is launching a sale of plane tickets to China, the airline’s press service reports. On September 1-30, 2011, plane tickets for Yekaterinburg-Beijing flights are available at special prices: ?159 for one-way ticket and ?350 for the round trip (plus the fees). The offer is valid for flights to be operated between October 1, 2011 and December 20, 2011. Tickets for Ural Airlines flights can be bought via the air carrier’s website www.uralairlines.com as well as in the booking offices.

Stern, the only bidder, won the tender for the repair of Mercedes automobiles belonging to Sverdlovsk Region Automobile Park. The repairs tender amounts to 1.99m RUR. The charge for a rate-hour is 2,100 RUR; the winner of the tender will service a total of fifteen vehicles. In fact, Stern has already won the tender for the purchase of a luxury car for the governor of the region. At the time, only one bidder was allowed to submit an application for the auction, which is why a claim laid by the region’s public prosecution authorities is now being processed in Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration

UTair Airlines was unable to meet its stockholder obligations in full. The company explains they were unable to pay the dividends for the year 2010 to some of the shareholders whose whereabouts and bank details were unknown; last year’s dividends amounted to 69.24m RUR altogether. Thus the sum of the dividends that have remained unpaid comes to 522,190 RUR.

The BOD of E.S. Yalamov Ural Mechano-Optical Plant Production Association suggested that the enterprise’s only shareholder Rostechnologii State Corporation should distribute the profit that was not distributed earlier (33.12m RUR) in the following way: 8.71m RUR should be directed to the payment of dividends and 24.4m RUR should be left within the company.

Rosaviation prolonged Avianova’s recently expired aircraft operator license at the last minute, but the license was prolonged by only one year rather than the standard two years, Kommersant reports. Now the agency announced last week that it had some doubts as to the air carrier’s financial solvency, so the airline had to undergo a very thorough inspection. The company representative said the last bit of papers requested by Rosaviation had to be delivered just yesterday. We’ll keep on adding new aircraft to our fleet of vehicles, independently and through a leasing company. By 2012, the

Federal Antimonopoly Service’s division in Perm Territory instituted two lawsuits regarding the instances of colluding in the field of consumer lending insurance. Alfa-Bank and AlfaStrakhovaniye-Zhizn as well as ROSBANK and Sozhekap Strakhovaniye Zhizn are suspected of violating Article 11 (part 1, paragraphs 4, 5, 8) of the Competition Protection Act. The FAS division reports the banks made private individuals who applied for loans sign life and health insurance agreements with certain insurers; the insurance agreement would be valid for the entire loan term, the payment was to be made in

The Ural Federal District division of Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service (FSFR) completed an in-office audit of Ural-Minolta aimed at checking the company’s compliance with the Russian securities legislation; the Service was particularly interested in whether the company complied with the requirements of Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service’s Order 09-33/pz-n as of August 13, 2009. Following the inspection, an order was issued to the company: Ural-Minolta now must eliminate the revealed violations of the Russian Federation law. The order was directed to the company on August 25,

ChTPZ and Daewoo International Corporation Textile Division signed a contract for the delivery of several tens of thousands of sets of modern, comfortable, and nice-looking workwear for the workers of its ‘white metallurgy’ divisionsVysota 239, the finishing center, Iron Ozone 32, and other departments of Chelyabinsk Tube-Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant. The delivery is to be made by December 2011, ChTPZ press service reports. The Korean experts visited the two plants the other day; they said they were impressed by the clean and smart-looking premises and got quite a few extra

Those opposed to the construction of a retail park in Verkh-Isetsky district of Yekaterinburg (to be developed by Forum Group) keep protesting, says Yabloko coordinator for Sverdlovsk Region Irina Skachkova. The construction site was blocked for four hours on Saturday. Activists claimed their went for a walk in the park and presented the authorities the ruling of the Statutory Court that said the area around was considered to be a TOP 1 kind of territory (a park); as they were not allowed to enter the park for some unclear reasons, they decided to have a picnic on the roadside. Incidentally,

The 8th international arms, military vehicles, and ammunition exhibition called Russian Expo Arms Nizhniy Tagil 2011 will take place in the Mid-Urals on September 8-11, 2011 and will present visitors to the fair the hi tech achievements not only of the defense industry but also those of the industrial sector on the whole; this makes the event a logical sequel to Innoprom 2011, the recent innovations exhibition, Sverdlovsk Region’s Minister for International and Foreign Economic Relations Alexander Kharlov says. Representatives of nearly forty countries, including delegations from twelve

A criminal suit relating to death of a number of workers who did some repairs at UC RUSAL Bogoslovsky smelter was recently directed to court. The spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities has already reported earlier on how the criminal proceedings were progressing; the lawsuit in question had to do with violation of labor safety regulations that led to the death of two workers; the victims had been contracted to do some jobs at UC RUSAL Bogoslovsky smelter in Krasnoturyinsk. It was detected that on June 9, 2011, a cable hoist used for lifting some slates collapsed

Zero inflation was observed in Russia, Denmark, and Great Britain in July. These data on inflation in Russia and foreign countries are available via Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service’s website. As for the European Union on the whole, deflation was noticed as the consumer prices index for the EU came to 99.6%. Prices also declined in Norway, Turkey, and Ukraine, whereas the highest inflation rates were seen in Byelorussia (3.5%), the Republic of Korea (0.7%), and Kazakhstan (0.5%). Byelorussia was also No. 1 in terms of the speed of price growth, as prices have gone up by 41% since

A meeting of Sverdlovsk Region Labor Protection Committee took place in Yekaterinburg recently. The number of work injuries at Foratek EnergoTransStroy’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary went up by 3.1 times in 2010 compared with 2009. Every year, the enterprise gets some fatal accidents, with one person killed in 2009, two people killed in 2010, and one person killed in the first half of 2011. The committee considered the problem and decided to bring the subsidiary director A. A. Koltonyuk’s attention to the fact that the enterprise has not been meeting the norms of the Russian Federation Labor Code

According to Kommersant, the profitability of supermarket chain Magnit (which has been the most revenue-successful business in the industry for the last two years) has been going down for two quarters in a row: the company’s EBITDA margin amounted to 6.15% in April-June 2011 against 7% in the second quarter of 2010 and to 8.12% in the entire year 2010. In the first half of 2011, Magnit’s EBITDA margin came to 6.56% compared with 7.3% in the first six months of 2010. Analysts had expected the margin to amount to 6.57%.

Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities completed their check of whether the credit instruments of Ural Exhibition Center had been secured in a legitimate way; now the Center is the investor in the construction of Yekaterinburg EXPO, an international exhibition center, at the expense of Sverdlovskaya poultry factory, a state-run enterprise. It has been determined that the finances for the international exhibition center Yekaterinburg EXPO came from both Ural Exhibition Center’s own funds and the borrowed ones (provided through a loan from Sberbank). The loan payoff was backed up by a

The guests of the 8th international arms and munitions exhibition called Nizhniy Tagil Russian Defence Expo 2011 will be able to see the battlefield and maintenance potential of the foreign states’ military equipment for the first time this year. France and Italy will exhibit their vehicles at the event for the first time ever. Remarkably, these participants are planning to show some combat action moves,’ says Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Industry & Science. For one, the coordinators of the exhibition have already signed contracts with the Italian Iveco, Thales, Nexter, and Renault

Greenpeace claims the produce of fourteen international clothing manufacturers contains some toxic components. The list features such companies as Adidas, H&M, Calvin Klein, Abercombie&Fitch, Kappa, Lacoste, Nike, and Puma, the online portal Molly.Ru reports. The organization’s report states that their research indicated some hydroxy-ethyl alkylphenol content in the clothes and footwear produced by these companies. These compounds are know to be able to convert into nonylphenol during washing, and this chemical can have a detrimental effect on a human’s hormonal balance; it can also

Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities for transportation detected a number of violations in the activity of the three airlines, RIA Novosti refers to head of the authorities Sergey Zabelov as saying. At the same time, no violations were detected in the performance of Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport, which is where the inspection of frequently delayed flights had taken place. The prosecution authorities began the inspection at the airport at the end of June. According to the data available to the authorities then, seven flights were delayed and four called off on June 27 alone.

The BOD of Ural Diesel Motor Plant (a member of Sinara Transport Machines Holding) appointed Nikolai Ovchinnikov the enterprise’s Director-General. Nikolai Ovchinnikov was previously employed as MSA s.a. Chairman of the Supervisory Board. The former DG Alexei Petrov, who was in office in November 2010-August 2011, took a new job offer.