The Secretary-General of Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales will be working in Yekaterinburg tomorrow. This is the official’s first visit to Yekaterinburg, and it should give the secretary-general an opportunity to personally get acquainted with the city and meet both the representatives of EXPO 2020 application committee and the municipal and regional government officials in order to discuss Yekaterinburg’s application process and look into the details of the announced theme: Global Mind: Uniting All Humanity in a Single Conversation’. Loscertales is

A consortium of investors comprising the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RFPI), RusEnergo Fund, Xenon Capital Partners, and the infrastructure fund Macquarie Renaissance signed the papers on the acquisition of a 26.43% shareholding in Enel OGK-5 from Inter RAO UES. The deal was approved of at Inter RAO UES BOD meeting. It is reported that the Russian Direct Investment Fund is investing $137.5m in the deal, while the other consortium members contribute $487.5m. The transaction amounts to a fixed $625m payment and an additional sum of up to $125m. The buying-in process will be completed after

Khanty-Mansiysky Bank insists that Ural Instrument-Making Plant be declared insolvent; this was the claim the bank placed with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court. The date of the preliminary hearing of the case has not been set yet. In fact, this very same court is now processing a number of claims laid by the plant against the bank, for one, the claim where the plant insists that the mortgage on a boiler house and a land allotment in Sverdlovsk Region’s Sysert District be declared free of encumbrances, and the claim where the plant insists that the encumbrances on the mortgage on

The South African Republic’s authorities are planning to set up the country’s honorary consulate in Yekaterinburg, the SAR’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Russia Mandisi Mpahlwa told Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin at today’s meeting. ‘The Urals are crucial to Russia’s economy. So we have decided to make the necessary effort for us to be present in Yekaterinburg in this or that form. I would like to officially notify you that setting up the SAR’s honorary consulate here is one of the options we are considering,’ the Ambassador said. Alexander Misharing

Byelorussia-based Minsk Automobile Plant is considering setting up automobile trailers production facility at Ishim Machine-Building Plant, the Governor of Tyumen Region’s press-service reports. ‘The first talks with the representatives of Minsk Automobile Plant were held in January, and now experts have paid a visit to the enterprise, looked at the available sites, and assessed their potential. The Byelorussian Honorary Consul in Tyumen Region’s Assistant Sergey Yefimchik says that the representatives of the plant and those of Mogilev Bus Plant are going to draw up a business plan on the new