Sergey Bukreyev was appointed Deputy Director-General and Director for Development of ERGO Russia’s Ural branch. Prior to this new appointment, he was the director at the region’s directorate. ‘It is exactly in the North-West and the Urals that ERGO’s Russian business has been developing most successfully and rapidly over the last few years. This is why it was decided to upgrade the status of the regional directorates’ heads and to appoint them Deputy Directors-General. I hope that after the performance reports for 2012 become available for analysis, the heads of other regional directorates

Online voting for the best logo for Ural IT cluster is still in progress on Arena Multimedia International Training Center’s website. Eight projects have been offered for public scrutiny altogether. Some work on the logo for Ural IT Cluster, a non-profit partnership, was part of the agenda of Design Managers’ Days in Yekaterinburg last weekend. The event was 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

Yekaterinburg Dairy Plant No. 1 will probably be converted into a Danone yoghurt and dairy products plant, Prime Agency reports. In fact, Unimilk Company (a member of Danone Unimilk Group) bought a 100% shareholding in Yekaterinburg Dairy Plant No.1 earlier, the company explains. Danone is also planning to increase the plant’s baby food output.

Microsoft Corporation is going to launch a micro-grant (up to $10,000) program for IT startups in 2012, CEO Microsoft Rus Strategic Technologies Department’s Seed Financing Fund Gaidar Magdanurov told RIA Novosti. ‘We intend to issue grants to finance a hundred projects over the next decade; last year, we offered grants to eight projects, and two grants have been issued since the beginning of the year; these amount to $40,000 and $50,000. This year we’ll also start offering micro-grants of up to $10,000, there will be at least six of those,’ he said. Magdanurov explained the company was

According to the preliminary data available, the consolidated net profit of the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International AG decreased by 17.76% in 2011 and thus amounted to ?968m, the bank’s press release states. At the same time, the company’s pre-tax profit rose by 6.68% last year compared with the year 2010, and came to ?1.37bn. The banking group’s net interest profit went up by 2.49% in 2011 and reached ?3.66bn. The final report will be published on March 29, Banki.ru reports.