UrBC, Moscow, September 30, 2016. The International Ski Federation (FIS) announced on its website that their Ski Jumping World Cup championship 2016/2017 won’t be held in Nizhniy Tagil, Sport Express reports. The city of Nizhniy Tagil was supposed to host women’s and men’s competition rounds on December 11-13. The federation, however, was unhappy with the organization of the event: the city appears to lack the necessary infrastructure and, besides, the previous championship’s prize money was not paid to the winners in time.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 30, 2016. Demand for ready-made businesses dropped by 17% on Yekaterinburg market in August 2016 compared with one year earlier (the country’s average decrease was 7%), the website Avito’s press service informs UrBC. Businesses in the tertiary sector sell best: such deals made up 30.5% of all market sales in August 2016 (-6.6% on a year earlier). Companies dealing in trade are the second most popular choice (their market share came to 22.7% (+2.1% on a year earlier), followed by catering (15.7%, up 2.4% on a year earlier), online sales (8.3%, up 2.1%),

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 30, 2016. Thirty-nine criminal lawsuits involving debt collectors allegedly applying illegitimate persuasion methods were instituted in Yekaterinburg by local public prosecution authorities, their press service reports. Following Sverdlovsk Region’s Public Prosecutor’s order, 362 pre-investigation check dossiers filed at Yekaterinburg police stations were looked into and inspected in September 2016. The checks all started after local citizens submitted their complaints regarding the illegitimate actions of micro-financing organizations’ and collection agencies’

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 30, 2016. Obshchestvo Malysheva 73, one of the Urals’ largest developers, reports they adopted a new brand name for some of their construction projects, the company press service reports. The company’s new housing projects will now be branded as Greenwich-Zhilaya Nedvizhimost. ‘Everyone knows about Greenwich Shopping Mall in Yekaterinburg, where it is located, and how to get there. Customers need to trust their developer and to understand clearly what they invest in. So an association with a well-known building is crucial. A developer which owns an asset as big

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 30, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation took part in the 12th annual RAEX-600 Forum in Moscow, the company press service reports. The forum was attended by high-profile President Administration officials, national ministries’ representatives, and Russia’s leading businesses’ owners and top managers. RAEX-600 Rating featuring the country’s largest companies was presented in the course of the forum’s plenary session. The ranking helps to look into performance and prospects of all the key economic sectors in the country. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation both made it to

UrBC, Moscow, September 29, 2016. Despite the inflation rate slowing down a bit in August, people’s factual pay kept going down for the second month in a row both in annual and month-by-month comparison terms, Finmarket refers to the Central Bank’s August reports as stating. Pay rise practices are growing increasingly more heterogeneous: for one, the difference in how salaries and wages get adjusted in the private and public sectors is now greater than ever. The public sector employees’ pay goes up most slowly and least noticeably. The unemployment rate declined from 5.6% in May and June down

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 29, 2016. The share of non-performing loans in the overall amount of consumer loans issued in Sverdlovsk Region now comes to 20.84%, National Credit History Bureau reports. All in all, the area’s consumer loan market rose by 36.75% in the course of this year. ‘Micro-financing policies vary from one federal constituency to another, depending on the specific risks that matter both to market players and to their customers. Micro-financing organizations operating in high-risk territories need to pay special attention to their risk procedures when considering

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 29, 2016. 21,835 new automobiles were sold in Yekaterinburg in January through August 2016, which was 24% less than one year earlier, Auto-Dealer-Yekaterinburg reports. Sales dropped by a quarter in August, with sales figures at 3,088 new cars. This is the second best month for the industry this year so far, only June sales (3,183 cars) looked better. Lada remains the market leader and keeps leaving its rivals behind. Renault is gradually outstripping Toyota as the most popular foreign brand. Additionally, Hyundai also made it to the list of top three best

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 29, 2016. Metcombank is now using National Credit History Bureau’s data on a particular loan applicant in its own decision-making system, the bank’s press service reports. The mathematical model that the bank’s scoring system is based upon was designed by the company FICO. Incorporating the Bureau’s data in their own procedures will protect the bank against unscrupulous borrowers, enhance retail lending efficiency, and provide better service for bona fide customers. ‘The Bureau’s industrial scoring test results proved a very efficient tool in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 29, 2016. Ural Vagon Zakod Corporation presented its transportable armored vehicle repair depot at the 2nd International ADEX 2016 Exhibition in Azerbaijan, the company press service reports. The company Director-General Oleg Sienko told Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev about their new product. President Aliyev looked at the portable wind machine that supplies electric power for the depot and went to the pavilion where a life-size sample of the corporation’s T-72 tank with a new fire control system is on display. ‘Our repair depot is a full-fledged,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 28, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) inspected 7,700 kg of fish in the first half of 2016; 2,200 kg, or 28.7% of these failed quality tests, the agency’s press service reports. For one, 500 kg of fish failed to comply with normative requirements and 1,600 kg did not have the right identification stamps; also, 50 kg of fish were adulterated. Rospotrebnadzor officers inspected, among other things, 1,900 cans of fish, of which 700 cans failed quality tests (including the 600 cans that did not comply with the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 28, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) inspected 16,300 kg of dairy foods in the first half of 2016; 2,500 kg, or 15.1% of these failed quality tests (compared with 24.6% in the first half of 2015), the agency’s press service reports. ‘The faulty items are the same ones as last year: these are the foods that fail to comply with the existing normative requirements, technological quality requirements, and adulteration checks,’ the press service says. Rospotrebnadzor picked and inspected 316 dairy food samples

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 28, 2016. Asking prices have decreased by 3.4% on Yekaterinburg existing home market since the start of the year. The figures kept going down in the first five months of the year and stopped declining by the beginning of summer, Ural Real Estate Chamber’s research findings indicate. As of September 26, 2016, the average per-square-meter asking price came to 68,359 RUR, which was 5.6% less than one year earlier and 10.9% less than in February 2015 (the price peak so far). The price decrease was most noticeable in the city’s remotest and least expensive locations,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 28, 2016. EVRAZ Cup football championship was held among children born in 2008 and 2009 in Nizhniy Tagil for the first time this year, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s press office reports. The event came after a company championship involving the holding’s employees that is held in Kachkanar, Sverdlovsk Region, every year. Eight teams from three Sverdlovsk Region towns (Verkhnyaya Salda, Kachkanar, Nizhniy Tagil) competed against one another, with some twenty games held at Vysokogorets Stadium in the course of one day. In between the games, anyone could try to score with

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 28, 2016. Tankprom 3, an All-Russian research-to-practice conference, will be held at Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Culture Palace in Nizhniy Tagil on October 4-6. The conference is part of special celebrations: the corporation’s head plant was founded eighty years ago this month, the company press service reports. The event is coordinated by Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation and co-organized by Moscow-based Amnit (an association for the development of scientific and technological museums), S. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 27, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region’s investigative authorities registered 267 crimes related to Article 145.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code (non-payment of wages/salaries for over two months) in the first half of the year, which exceeded the number for the first half of 2015 by 64%, Sverdlovsk Region Prosecutor’s Office reports. 70% of registered crimes were detected due to employees filing their complaints. Thirty-seven criminal lawsuits were instituted as a result (compared with twenty-seven one year earlier). ‘Particularly worrying is the fact that some of the criminal

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 27, 2016. ChTPZ Group shipped its first 3,300,000 kg of large-diameter pipes for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the company press service reports. The solemn shipping ceremony took place in Chelyabinsk and was attended by the Group’s shareholders Andrei Komarov and Alexander Fedorov, CEO Nord Stream 2 AG Matthias Warnig and Chief Project Officer Henning Kothe, Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky, Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant’s Director-General Alexander Grumman, and Magnitogorsk Iron & Metallurgical Works DG Pavel Shilyayev. The first set of pipes

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 27, 2016. EVRAZ Holding’s Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise (EVRAZ KGOK) is now completing the seasonal repairs of railroad conduits: this year’s plan is to replace some 8km of railroads and about twenty turnout switches, the holding’s press office reports. The repairs and replacements are being worked on by the company rail vehicle depot. For one, new rails have been installed and drainage points cleaned at the Main Quarry premises. The same will be done at the processing and agglomeration plants by the end of October. ‘Six different kinds of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 27, 2016. EVRAZ Holding keeps working to switch Boiler 9 at its Zapsib Power Station in Siberia to secondary energy resources (coke-oven and blast-furnace gases), EVRAZ Holding Siberia’s press office reports. Switching is expected to reduce boiler maintenance costs, avoid idle times, increase electric power output by nearly 10%, and increase the station’s energy efficiency. The upgrades will also result in lower emissions and will thus improve the area’s environmental status. EVRAZ Holding invested some 950m RUR in the project. ‘Energy spending is part of our

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 27, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Kamensk-Uralsky Foundry Plant (KULZ) unveiled a special monument, an airplane, on Machine-Builder’s Day, the company press service reports. ‘Our full-cycle production plant deals in everything from casting to mechanical treatment to assembly and supplies parts and components for airborne and terrestrial vehicles. One such vehicle sample is now installed next to the plant entrance. Even though there are still a lot of things to do around the monument and the surrounding patch, the main and the most difficult part of the