Based on the report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affected the health of Sverdlovsk Region population in 2005, three subsidiaries of UralElectroMed (Nevyanskiy mine, Safyanovsk Copper, and Polymetallic Production) produced 9,910,400 tons of waste varying from class 1 to class 4 in terms of being environmentally hazardous, and only 6,613,900 tons were actually recycled. These subsidiaries hit the region’s top ten non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises in terms of waste production. There are 75 non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region

The recent meeting of the committee set up to coordinate the top-priority national projects in Sverdlovsk Region was devoted to the issue of providing some state backup of construction projects. As a result, the Russian Federation Government received applications for state guarantees for 2007 (that may come to over 2bn RUR) regarding three residential areas: Academic project of Yekaterinburg and two areas in Kamensk-Uralskiy and Revda. The new district is to appear in the south-west of Yekaterinburg and is expected to occupy 2,500 hectares of land, with 1,200 hectares covered by forests and

According to the press officer of Ural Airlines, the company is going to hold the Best Flight Attendant competition on December 15, 2006. This event is aimed at motivating and encouraging the personnel whose skills and competence comply with the most demanding professional requirements. The first tour of the competition took place at the end of November when 20 participants were selected among the company’s flight attendants based on their application forms. The second tour of the selection process resulted in choosing 6 candidates by a committee made up of very experiences instructors.

‘The best part of complaints we get about banks have to do with issuance of loans and credit cards. A lot of such claims concern the credit cards provided by Russian Standard and Home Credit Ltd. to their bona fide borrowers,’ reports Chairman of Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee Andrei Artemyev. ‘Home Credit Ltd., for example, gave one of its clients a credit card with a 40,000 RUR limit and informed them that insurance was the obligatory part of the deal. The sum of the insurance payment was withdrawn from this credit card account. In a few months, the client owed the bank something

The quality management system related to steelmaking and steel-rolling production of Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) received the international ISO 9001:2000 certificate. This certificate arrived from Köln, Germany, where the headquarters of TUF CERT (the global certifying service leader) are situated. The company’s quality management system underwent some technical inspection in September 2006; the auditors from TUF CERT received all the papers and proofs of the company’s full compliance with the international ISO 9001 standards in terms of all

‘The agreements that insurance companies sign with their clients often contain very many additional terms that have to be complied with in order for the event to be classed as insured. This is done in an attempt to let the company avoid paying the money in most cases. The clients do not always read their agreements, and if they do, they may overlook some terms, and end up getting no money. One should always consult a legal expert prior to signing an agreement,’ Chairman of Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee Andrei Artemyev announced at the conference devoted to the committee’s

‘Our organization has drawn up and sent a letter of inquiry to the Russian Federation Ministry of Regional Development concerning Noviy Grad, the local developer. We asked the ministry officials to do something about the state of events on the regional real estate market currently affected by the unfair practices of this builder,’ Vasiliy Ganzhin, the Chairman of Right to a Dwelling, a non-profit organization, said to UrBC representative. ‘Our letter tried to draw the officials’ attention to the fact that Noviy Grad does some construction without proper permission, fails to meet any licensing

‘People normally submit their visa applications needed to go to Europe for Christmas and New Year in advance, that is, in November or October. This is done in order to avoid some unpleasant surprises like this one,’ Vice President of Fond Mira Travel Company Olga Svechkova said about the recent refusal by the French Consulate to accept visa applications. ‘We managed to submit the applications for our clients before this happened three days ago. As everything was done beforehand, these tourists will be able to fly to France for their holidays. Yet those people who started getting their visas

The Federal Antimonopoly Service in Sverdlovsk Region settled the grievance of Mobile TeleSystems Ltd. (aka MTS, the mobile operator) against inappropriate advertisements used by Motive (Yekaterinburg-2000 Ltd.). Mobile TeleSystems Ltd. observed that the phrase ‘We do not raise our tariffs’ used on Motive billboards (shortly after the introduction of the CPP principle) was not truthful as Motive had actually changed the charge for some of its services. From the legal viewpoint, the party to be held responsible for the two operators’ dispute is Region-Svyaz-Contract Ltd., on whose behalf all

‘The power supplying companies can raise investments in three ways: trough raising their tariffs, cutting costs, and reducing interest rates on their loans,’ says General Director of Blagodat Securities Investment Company Vsevolod Chaschin. ‘The first way is obvious but has some limitations regulated by the Regional Power Engineering Committee. The third way is, a matter of fact, well justified as the loan interest rates tend to go down lately. A successfully developing company needs to choose the second way, that is, providing effective and sound management. It is reducing the company’s

The profits of the city of Yekaterinburg exceeded the target figure for 2006 by 3.009bn RUR. According to the Head of Finance and Budget Department of the Council Andrei Koryukov, the main reason for this was effective collection of tax from natural persons, which, in its turn, was caused by increases in salaries and their becoming official rather than otherwise. They also got more money from the single temporary income tax and the land-tax. Investments from the federal and regional budgets (including those intended for top-priority national projects) became another important factor. This

Ural Civil Aviation Plant is now undergoing the ‘author watch’ inspections carried out by Klimov Plant Unitary Enterprise. The latter has intellectual property rights over some of the goods produced by Ural Civil Aviation Plant, so it carries out some inspections on regular basis. Until quite recently, the owner of the rights had no complaints about the quality of the produce. After the beginning of the so-called raiding campaign, however, everything has changed: some unknown people have been producing negative publicity related to the plant and trying to take over the company; at the same

The state of events at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd. puts its creditors in trying circumstances as neither the structure nor the management of the company have been determined and agreed upon. Nobody knows how the new team of executives will handle the company’s assets and liabilities, either – and the company’s official debt might come to more than 200m RUR. Financial market experts, however, believe the real indebtedness might amount to more than all of the company’s assets are worth. Among the plant’s creditors are some federal and regional organizations that now have certain

‘This year, the Federal Financial Market Service in the Ural Federal District has tried a few working methods and introduced some new ways of doing things. The financial market of Yekaterinburg tends to get fewer securities and more capitalization of companies recently,’ Vladimir Krysov, Head of the Federal Financial Market Service in the Ural Federal District, announced at the press conference devoted to the results of their activity in 2006. ‘Over the nine months of 2006, we have looked at 2,156 quarterly financial reports (compared with 2,812 reports in January-September 2005), registered

As the PR Director of regional internal affairs administration Valeriy Gorelykh said to UrBC representative, Sverdlovsk Region Investigative Administration has recently placed a criminal case with them that involves fraud and organized crime. There are 17 accused and 729 victims, and the damage is estimated at 100m RUR. According to the inquiry officers, the accused would invite people to the so-called informative seminars and tried to convince their victims that only the members of their fund would ever be successful. Then they took a 45,000-RUR to 60,000-RUR membership fee and provided the

KH Steel of Cyprus (one of the major shareholders and a subsidiary of Evraz Group) sold its .9301% share holding (1,091,978 shares); the amount of transaction comes to $80.358661m, reports Finam.ru. Evraz Group offered a 8.3% share holding worth $422m (29.1m GDR worth $14.5 each) at London Stock Exchange at the beginning of June 2005. Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital offered a 6% holding of Evraz Group shares at the end of January 2006 (the amount of the transaction came to $389m). Prior to this, 91.7% of Evraz Group shares used to belong to Crosland Global Ltd.Alexander Abramov had

The opening ceremony of the visa section of the German Consulate in Yekaterinburg has been scheduled for January 22, 2007, Tilo Klinner, Consul-General, said in the course of the Ural Press Club meeting. ‘As they have started the construction of the new building for the consulate only recently, it will have been finished in three years’ time, so the visa section will be located on the 7th floor of Atrium Palace Hotel for the time being,’ the Consul said. The section was supposed to have opened before the end of 2006; the consulate has been using the office in Atrium Palace Hotel for quite a

SKB-Bank located the holder of their 300,000th VISA-SKB card: this was Alexei Strinadkin, a tube-rolling shop worker of Taganrog Metallurgical Plant. The holder was awarded this special card in the course of a solemn ceremony in the bank’s office in Taganrog. Oleg Semityaga, the director of the office, also gave Mr Strinadkin a TVset. The bank issued its 200,000th VISA card as recently as 11 months ago, which means it’s managed to increase the number of its cards by over one-third in less than a year, reports the press officer for SKB-Bank.

‘Given the experience of other Russian airports, the decision of Koltsovo Airport management to stop reconstruction due to lack of money is not very justified. The airport executives say that they ran out of money after they had been made to reduce their fuel prices. Yet a project as large as this cannot be financed through just one source of income: it is too costly to be covered by fuel prices alone. Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports, for example, have successfully attracted some investments in the past,’ Deputy GD for External Relations of Ural Airlines Alexei Fomin said to UrBC

‘Today, the merger of large banks is normally followed by a re-branding campaign. VTB, for one, is a striking example of large-scale re-branding brought about by some external rather than internal factors. One should bear in mind that a re-branding campaign will always be successful as long as it is launched properly,’ says Viktor Nemikhin, the executive of BrokerCreditService Company Ltd. ‘However, the success of such campaigns can also depend on the bank’s marketing policy. Coming up with the image and the slogan alone is not enough; the bank’s name must be made simple and recognizable. VTB