Last year, Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) invested over 120m RUR in employee training. 12,883 employees took part in various professional development, re-training, and second specialization programs, including 6,747 blue-collar workers and 6,136 managers, experts, and clerks. The majority of workers (4,241 people) attended purpose-oriented courses last year, while 1,603 people underwent re-training programs, 339 people attended production & technical courses, and 564 people obtained a second qualification. MMK’s employee training spending amounted to 121.3m RUR last year. In

The agenda of Design Managers’ Days (to be held in Yekaterinburg on February 25-26, 2012) covers some work on the logo for Ural IT Cluster, a non-profit partnership. The event will be attended by experts from British Higher School of Art & Design, Parsons The New School For Design, the Association of Design Management, Ural State University of Economics’ Marketing & International Management Department, and Arena Multimedia International Training Center as well as employees of BridgerConway, StreetArt, Vitamin, and AMG An intensive workshop dubbed Brand Design: A Step-by-Step Guide

Baltika Breweries intends not to pay any share dividends for the year 2011 to the stockholders. Such was the recommendation offered to the shareholders by the company’s Board of Directors.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court fined Metro Cash & Carry for selling foods that did not meet the normative documentation requirements; the fine amounted to 50,000 RUR and meant that the court ruled in favor of the claim laid against the company by Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor in Leninsky and Verkh-Isetsky districts of Yekaterinburg. Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights agency) insisted that the retailer face administrative liability and that the following food items be confiscated: canned Atlantic sardines in oil (produced at Baltiysky Kombinat, Svetly, Kaliningrad

Russian businesspeople find it more convenient to invest in the Urals’ economy through Cyprus. This was a hypothesis voiced by head of the Cyprus-based construction company Cybarco Ural representation Vladislav Andreyev, who looked into the data carried by Tyumenstat, the company’s press service reports. According to the statistics agency, 99.7% of investments Tyumen Region (excluding Khanty-Mansiysky and Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Regions) receives come from Cyprus. All in all, these went up by 209.1 times, that is, from $26.3m to $5,472.4m. It is remarkable, Andreyev notes, that the number

Rosatom is considering the possibility of installing two more fast fission reactors at Beloyarskaya nuclear power station in Sverdlovsk Region, to complement the BN-800 reactor currently under construction, RIA Novosti refers to head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko as saying. The nuclear station currently uses the world’s only fast fission reactor-based power generating unit that has an industrial-scale capacity, BN-600. The BN-800 fast fission reactor-based unit is under construction at the moment. The first portion of fuel is expected to be loaded into this reactor in the middle of 2013.