UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 15, 2019. Yekaterinburg-based cardholders/customers of the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) made RUB 1.7 billion worth of transactions between December 30, 2018 and January 8, 2019; this is 53% more than last winter break, the bank’s press service reports. Just like one year earlier, the better part of the money got directed to card-to-card transfers; the overall amount (RUB 256.7 million) is comparable with last year’s figures (RUB 253.3 million). The cards were also used heavily at supermarkets (RUB 15.9 million in 2018-2019 compared with

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, January 15, 2019. MMK Group’s asset MMK METIZ recently got audited and re-certified for compliance with the new rail industry standard ISO/TS 22163:2017. The company is now one of Russia’s first metal goods makers to get certified for the standard. According to MMK METIZ’s press service, it took the representatives of German-based certification authority DQS’s Russian branch a week to conduct a full audit of the company’s management system and test it for compliance with the ISO/TS 22163:2017 standard; the new standard comes to replace the earlier one known as IRIS. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 15, 2019. Koltsovo Customs’ officers did not let a batch of fake Cartier jewelry get smuggled into Russia. According to Ural Customs’ press service, a passenger on Beijing-Yekaterinburg flight was bringing with him sixteen cardboard boxes with six rings and sixteen bracelets in them, all bearing Cartier engravings. The overall weight was estimated at slightly under a kilogram. The customs officers confiscated the jewelry, had it examined by experts, and checked with the trademark owner. A Cartier representative estimated the damage to the brand at RUB 6.5m. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 15, 2019. Fifty young employees of EVRAZ Holding’s Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) received corporate awards in the Best Young Team and Youth Award Laureate contests, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Relations Center reports. Ten EVRAZ NTMK workers (blast furnace keepers, repair technicians, mill rollers, engineers, foremen, and so on) received the Youth Award Laureate awards. All of them proved very active in the plant’s social events and professional skill competitions and submitted and launched quite a few improvement proposals. The Best Young Team

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 15, 2019. More than nine million people flew with Ural Airlines last year. According to the air carrier’s press service, Ural Airlines offered their services to 9,000579 passengers (up 13% on the year 2017), including 4,894,305 passengers on domestic flights, 2,283,595 passengers on international flights, and 1,822,679 passengers on flights to and from the CIS member states. The airline operated 61,634 flights in 2018 all in all (+11% on a year earlier), including 33,917 domestic flights, 14,766 international flights, and 12,951 flights to and from the CIS member