It is in Chelyabinsk Region where all the major investment projects aimed at industrial and metallurgical development are now being implemented at the moment, Russia’s Industry & Trade Minister Denis Manturov said in the course of today’s visit to Chelyabinsk. The minister arrived at the premises of Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant, where he looked at the LDP production department called Vysota 239. He expressed a particular interest in the ‘white metallurgy’ principle based on the combination of production culture, high-quality produce, environmental safety, and the worker’s great skills.

The Forbes magazine carried yet another rating called Best Cities for Doing Business 2012. According to the magazine’s analysts, the top ten municipalities are: 1) Sochi 2) Ufa 3) Chelyabinsk 4) Tyumen 5) Nizhniy Novgorod 6) Yekaterinburg 7) Makhachkala 8) Kazan 9) Ulan-Ude 10) Krasnodar.

Ural Locomotives (based in Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Sverdlovsk Region) started working on the foundation for the new production facility meant for the manufacturing of Desiro RUS (Lastochka) electric trains. At the construction site, the workers are currently busy preparing for the buildings and assembly jobs, installing the metal frameworks for the columns, covering the casing in concrete, and driving in piles along the axes of the foundation for the Desiro RUS main production building.

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport is planning to invest 1.78bn RUR in its development this year, the company reports. This is a 27.7% increase in investments on previous year. For one, the company is planning to have the airport reconstructed on the inside this year. This is estimated to cost 1bn RUR, with the sum supplied from the airport’s own funds. The reconstruction project provides for connecting the airport’s two buildings together, which will result in a 50% increase in the amount of commercial space, Interfax-Ural reports.

‘The construction of garage sets in Yekaterinburg is unprofitable at the moment,’ the Director-General of YIT Uralstroy Roman Gibov said at a press conference. ‘Putting up parking lots brings no money no matter what kind of lot it is, be it a parking next to an apartment building or a separate parking facility. The people’s current mentality makes them unwilling to leave their cars at a distance, so they park in the front yard. Besides, buying a parking spot is a luxury. Not everyone can afford that,’ Gibov says. In fact, the company put up a separate 300-spot parking facility in Kosmonavtov

Polevskoy Cryolite Plant’s BOD suggested that the shareholders vote for passing the dividend for 2011 in the course of the annual general meeting. This recommendation was brought about by the fact that the company had made some losses in the previous year, the plant reports. The enterprise’s net loss (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) came to 406.76m RUR in 2011. In fact, the plant did not pay any dividend for 2010 due to net loss either, Interfax-Ural observes.

Before the end of this year, some fifty stores located in MEGA Yekaterinburg Shopping Center will launch new concepts, the company’s press service reports. For one, JS Casual, Camaieu, Svyaznoy, Baon, White Wind Digital, Salamander, Giovanni Boticelli, Pierre Cardin, and O’stin have already presented new concepts and moved to new premises. In addition, the food court zone is being renovated as well: D’Antonio Restaurant with a separate seating zone will be opened in the nearest future, followed by Subway, Paul Bakery (with a new design), and the pie place Stolle.

Koltsovo Airport intends not to pay any share dividend for 2011. This was a recommendation to the company’s stockholders from the Board of Directors. The recommendation was adopted by five votes, with three BOD members voting against this. The AGM has been scheduled for June 29, 2012 and is to take place in Yekaterinburg.

The Greek air carrier Astra Airlines operated its first chartered flight from Yekaterinburg to Saloniki. Kommersant refers to Mouzenidis Travel Director-General as saying that the flight was operated using a one-time permit issued by the Federal Air Transport Agency. The airline intends to operate about thirty flights from Yekaterinburg to Saloniki this summer. Rosaviation reported earlier that the air carrier had no permission to operate the said flights because this particular destination was not stated in Greece and Russia’s aviation agreement.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court will look into the claim laid by First Freight Company against Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation on June 14, 2012. The plaintiff insists on being paid 4.6m RUR. The sum in question constitutes the compensation of damage that the plaintiff claims was done to it when the defendant-manufactured carriages got broken in a train crash. While Uralvagonzavod disagrees with the claim, a number of third parties, including Russian Railways, Second Freight Company, ZHASO Insurance Company, and SOGAS have already supported the plaintiff’s claim.

Sverdlovsk Region announced the results of its Taxpayer of the Year competition. When making its decisions, the jurors mostly looked in such criteria as the increase in the amount of regional budget payments, involvement in the social programs and investment projects, the average pay, and other factors. In the course of the elimination round, the jurors’ open ballot resulted unanimously in the decision to award honorary diplomas of Sverdlovsk Region Government to Sinara Pipe Plant, Koltsovo Airport, Sverdlovsk Region Railways (a subsidiary of Russian Railways), Uralvagonzavod Scientific &

The preliminary court hearings on the case relating to the so-called economic wing of Uralmash criminal conspiracy will start at 10:00 AM on June 4, 2012, Sverdlovsk Region Court told UrBC. ‘The hearings involve people like Tkachuk, Mishenin, Kolyasnikov, Temlyakova, Rushitskaya, Zhuravleva, and others,’ the court told UrBC. ‘The accused asked for the case to be heard by a board of jurors. Under the law, the preliminary hearings are held in camera; the date on which the trial starts is to be announced,’ the court explained.

Starting June 12, Ural Airlines is planning to launch the new flight from Yekaterinburg to Gelendzhik, the company says. The flight will be operated through August 13, every Monday, using the Airbus family planes. Now Ural Airlines is one of Russia’s top ten air carriers that serviced over 2.5m passengers last year. Its flights network covers over 120 destinations; most of the aircraft in the company’s fleet of vehicles are Airbus planes. At the moment, the airline is using 24 planes (15 A 320 and 9 A 321 ones).

RBC daily reports Facebook is planning to launch a new payment service as well as a person-to-person payments system in Russia. According to some sources that are privy to the course of negotiations, these are Bank24.ru and Russian Standard Bank that can be chosen as the social network’s Russian partners. Facebook, which recently went through with an IPO, keeps setting up new services. A source privy to the course of negotiations says the social network is planning to introduce its own money order system and a new one-click checkout service in Russia. The new money order system will make it

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by E.S. Yalamov Mechano-Optical Plant against Ural Federal University regarding goodwill protection. The plant representatives claim that the defendant reported some inaccurate and goodwill-impairing data in a letter to Deputy Head of Russian Government Dmitri Rogozin dated February 7, 2012. E.S. Yalamov Mechano-Optical Plant applied for this letter to be produced by the defendant, since the plaintiff has no copy of this letter, and the plaintiff’s demand to provide them with a copy has been ignored. As the court needs to

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court started looking into the claim laid by Microsoft Corporation against MSK Insurance Group regarding a compensation for copyright abuse (997.26m RUR). The issue at hand is the illegal use of software, Windows OS, and Office. The court sustained the plaintiff’s petition and thought it necessary to demand the original documentation relating to the administrative offense case 5-8/2011 from Oktyabrsky District Court of Yekaterinburg. The papers in question are an order dated November 18, 2010 regarding an examination of premises, buildings, land allotments, and

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court looked into the application placed by Uralprivatbank and decided to declare the bank one of the creditors of a sole trader Igor Dulebintz on a third-priority basis. The bank’s claim comes to 12.43m RUR. In October 2011, an observation procedure was commenced involving the founder of Fond Mira Igor Dulebintz. In February 2012, the businessman had to undergo bankruptcy proceedings. According to the files of the case, Sverdlovsk Region Federal Court in Sysert District ruled in May 2011 that Dulebintz should pay Uralprivatbank 12.43m RUR (a credit line debt). A

The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of India to Russia Ajay Malhotra is going to visit Sverdlovsk Region soon, the region’s Deputy Minister for International & Foreign Economic Relations Vladimir Solovarov reports. ‘India is Russia’s strategic partner. Cooperating with this country opens a way to obtaining advanced technologies, as the world’s major companies have been operating in India for a long time already. Also, India is a very receptive market for our enterprises’ produce. One should also bear in mind that our partnership with India is a long-time one, dating back to

The auction aimed at selling a 100% stake in the state-run insurance company Yugoria has been put off till October 1, 2012, Yugoria’s press service reports. The decision was made in the course of Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region Yugra Government’s meeting dedicated to the privatization of the state-owned property in the region. For one, the attendees considered the way the Governor’s request for monitoring the course of privatization and the insurance market in the course of Yugoria’s privatization was complied with. In the end, it was decided to postpone the auction until October 1, 2012.

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) and Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) held a coordination meeting dedicated to the two companies’ strategic cooperation. The meeting was attended by representatives of ChTPZ and MMK’s technical and R&D experts as well as the heads of ChTPZ daughter enterprise ChTPZ Engineering, ChTPZ’s press officer reports. The meeting participants looked into and discussed the ways of protecting their intellectual property that had been created in the course of the two enterprises’ cooperation, agreed on the members of the joint work team, and spoke about