December 5, 2012. Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK), one of the world’s largest OCTG manufacturers, bought a 55% shareholding in Gulf International Pipe Industry L.L.C. (GIPI) in the Sultanate of Oman, TMK press service reports. The enterprise’s capacity makes it possible to produce over 200,000 tons of OCTG welded and line pipes for the oil and gas industry. The plant’s key customers are currently some major O&G enterprises operating in the Persian Gulf. GIPI’s other stockholders are Oman Investment Corporation (OIC), Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC), and Posco P&S. TMK agreed with

December 5, 2012. UBT-Uralvagonzavod (a member of Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation) is launching a subsidiary on the premises of Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. The project was elaborated in order to sell Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant-Uraltrac’s produce. Using the subsidiary’s customer database will help the Chelyabinsk division of the corporation to sell its railway vehicles spare parts and components. The two parties will also cooperate in supplying Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant with goods and materials. UBT has already been

December 5, 2012. Yekaterinburg is now of the top 20 Russian cities with the greatest number of companies that accept credit and debit cards for payments. The rating is topped by Surgut, Izhevsk, and Nizhnevartovsk: these cities have the greatest share of companies whose goods and services can be paid for using a bank card. This information is available from the research carried out by 2GIS, who compared 180 Russian cities in terms of organizations that process cards issued by international payment systems. The research resulted in singling out the top 20 cities where cash is not quite so

December 5, 2012. An outlet in Yekaterinburg will enjoy great popularity, as this market niche is currently vacant; this will also attract more investments into the region, the plenipotentiary representative of the Trustees and Developers Guild for Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region Andrei Bril said at a press conference dedicated to the results of the Guild’s local division’s performance in 2012 today. ‘We need outlets to make sure people don’t have to go shopping to Milan and leave large sums of money there,’ Bril pointed out. Now there are currently no outlet centers in Russia. In 2012,

December 5, 2012. Yekaterinburg City Council is in no hurry to start working on the construction of the second line of the local underground network, as the officials fear the necessary funds (approximately 32bn RUR) will not be allocated from the federal budget, Deputy Mayor for Strategic Planning & Economic & Financial Issues Alexander Vysokinsky said at a meeting of the Economic Development, Investment, Industry, and Entrepreneurial Activity Committee and Urban Planning and Land Management Committee. To start constructing the underground, some time-consuming preliminary work has to