April 1, 2015. Ural Airlines won the national Russian Wings Prize once again: the air carrier won in Domestic Flights and E-Commerce categories for the year 2014, the airline’s press service reports. The awarding ceremony (the eighteenth one since the prize was established) took place at the Renaissance Moscow Monarch Center Hotel in Moscow. 38 Russian and 58 foreign air carriers, as well as 13 airports and other companies in the civil aviation sector, competed for the prizes. Winners were selected by secret ballot by members of three expert groups. The Russian Wings Prize was founded by the

April 1, 2015. SKB Bank keeps expanding its ATM network in Saint Petersburg. The new branch, the third one in Saint Petersburg, started operating in Ozerki (one of the city’s busiest districts) recently, the bank’s press service reports. The branch is located very close to Prospekt Prosveshcheniya Underground Station (136 Engels St Bldg 1A). The place is open for private customers from 9AM to 7PM on weekdays and from 10AM to 4PM on Saturdays; business customers and sole traders are welcome to come from 9AM to 4PM on weekdays. The branch presents a new office format with modern design,

April 1, 2015. This April, ChTZ Uraltrac (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is going to make and deliver to its customers six bulldozers which will be named after the prominent Urals-based home front workers who contributed greatly to the development of the defense industry during war times. According to Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service, the bulldozers will bear the names of Soviet statesmen who were involved in the Southern Urals’ tank-making industry. ‘Head of the Communist Party Chelyabinsk Region Committee, who took part in the development of the area’s

April 1, 2015. Renting an office in Yekaterinburg grew cheaper in the first quarter of the year; the market supply in the sector is also on the rise, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s Konstantin Oktayev told UrBC. ‘18% of all Class B offices in the city are now available for tenants (up 4% on the last quarter of 2014); the same is true of 20% of Class A offices (-3%) and 12% of Class B+ ones (+1%). This increase in the market supply has to do with a lot of new office buildings that got commissioned in the first quarter of 2015,’ Oktayev explains. The analyst says that average rental rates have

April 1, 2015. Pavel Turkov, a setter-up of numerically controlled machines at Ural Locomotives, won the third prize in a professional skills contest called Glory to the Man of Labor!, Sinara Group’s PR Center reports. According to head of Ural Locomotives HR Department Andrei Pryakhin, the event is a very important one for the company. ‘Our company currently runs its own employee training system. NC machine operators and setters-up are the people today’s machine-building really needs,’ he said. Local contests winners from machine-building enterprises based in Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, and

April 1, 2015. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) managed to decrease its expenses by $524m last year thanks to united efforts of all the production and administrative divisions. The company reports this was made possible due to improved organization of labor during large-scale repairs and equipment upgrades ($75m), improved supply chains, more efficient composition of raw materials, and better coordination of technical jobs ($57m), reorganization of maintenance procedures and implementation of innovative materials ($114m). Cutting down on managerial expenses resulted in another $8m in