The total damage caused by industrial and other kinds of accidents that occurred in Sverdlovsk Region in 2005 amounted to 19.6 million RUR; this figure includes 11.1 million RUR worth of damage caused by accidents related to major pipeline transport. In 2006, the total damage was estimated at 23.5 million RUR, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 19.7%; in 2007, losses reached 82.8 million RUR, which exceeded the figures for 2006 by 28%. In the first quarter of 2008, figures came to 13.2 million RUR.

Kirill Shubin, General Director of Koltsovo airport of Yekaterinburg, admitted that the airport was going to introduce another fuel price increase soon. On June 21, 2008, the fuel will cost 13.6% more than before and will be available for 30,600 RUR per ton. The announcement to this extent was also made by the airport’s deputy GD Anton Fedotov earlier. The airport’s top executives report the increase has to do with the general state of events on the domestic and global market.

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel appointed Mikhail Sharin Sverdlvosk Region’s Deputy Minister of Industry and Science. Mikhail Sharin was born in 1960 and graduated from Ural Electromechanic Institute of Railway Transport Engineers in 1982. He has always been employed at Sverdlovsk Region Railways in one capacity or another, his last position being that of first deputy railway head for passenger carriers and that of head of infrastructure services for passenger travel. Mikhail Sharin’s new office is related to supervising all kinds of air, automobile, and railway transport as well

Kinetika, a group of logistics companies, has recently introduced a toll-free number (8-800-2000-999, all calls free within Russia) for its contact center. ‘We did this to make sure Kinetika is easy to work with no matter what part of Russia our customer is in. The quality of our customer service is reaching some totally new heights,’ says the company’s Sales and Marketing Director Stanislav Danilchenko. Experts from the company’s help and information center can update their callers on all the issues related to the logistics services Kinetika renders; they can also handle contract-related

On June 16, 2008, URSA Bank made 28.425 million RUR worth of coupon payments on its second bond issue. The coupon yield was determined by the 7.6% annual interest rate, with payment per bond coming to 18.95 RUR. URSA Bank went through with its second bond issue worth 1.5 billion RUR on December 16, 2005; the bonds are to be in circulation for three years; the issue was coordinated by Dresdner Bank.

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (ChTPZ Group’s largest tube and pipe manufacturers) supplied their consumers with 721,400 tons of tubular goods in the first five months of 2008, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 809,100 tons) by 11%. ChTPZ Group sold 385,800 tons of tubes and pipes in the five months of the year, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 453,400 tons) by 15%. These figures include a 23% drop in the amount of large-diameter pipes: this came to 198,300 tons compared with 256,200 tons of LDPs in

The Bank of Russia came up with some data on the international money orders made by private individuals in the first quarter of 2008. Over 190 billion RUR worth of international money orders have been made in Russia since the beginning of the year. Most money orders destined for the countries of the far abroad go to Switzerland, China, and the United States. Over 21 billion RUR, for instance, were directed to Switzerland and over 10 billion RUR were sent to the U.S. At the same time, a lot of international money orders go to the countries of the near abroad. The lion’s share of those (10

In order to meet its customers’ needs and for their greater convenience, Ural Airlines will operate some additional Yekaterinburg-Anapa-Yekaterinburg flights on June 17, 2008 and June 28, 2008. This is believed to be a good offer for travelers going to or from the south of Russia. On Tuesday, June 17, 2008, the plane is to leave Yekaterinburg at 5.15 PM and to arrive in Anapa at 6.30 PM, and then the aircraft is to take off in Anapa at 8 PM and to land in Yekaterinburg at 1.15 AM on Wednesday, June 18, 2008. On Saturday, June 28, 2008, the plane takes off from Yekaterinburg at 4.30 PM and

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of private individuals’ deposits and other investments in Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank valid for 31 to 90 days went down by 55.80% (from 6.277 million RUR to 2.774 million RUR) in January-May 2008.

An extraordinary general meeting held at a Nizhniy Tagil-based plant dealing in production of boilers and heaters resulted in early termination of powers of all of the enterprise’s BOD members. Boris Dyakonov, Yegor Konyukhovskiy, Yuri Bystrov, Valeriy Petaev, Vladimir Belov, and Mark Kravchenko were elected the new BOD members. This means that Chairman of Bank24.ru’s Supervisory Board Sergey Lapshin is not going to become the plant’s new BOD member.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk (Chelyabinsk area), 17.06.2008. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK)’s mechanics’ team started assembling the Chinese DHI-DCW Group’s cranes for plate mill 5000 currently under construction. Prior to assembling the cranes, the enterprise sent two mechanics to China in order for them to learn about the particularities of these cranes’ design. Their job is now supervised by the representatives of the producer factory. DHI is to supply twenty-six cranes to MMK, four of which are to deliver slabs to the baking furnace, one of which is to service the water descaling system,

The amount of cargo handled by Russian Railway Public Company went up by 3.9% over the five months of 2008; the company has transported a total of 570 million tons of cargo since the beginning of the year and some 115 million tons of cargo in May 2008 (.2% better than a month earlier). In May 2008, the growing volume of cargo operations was most noticeable at Kaliningrad Railways, with their 12.4% increase in freight turnover, Sakhalin Railways, with their 11.2% increase, East Siberian Railways, with their 9.6% increase, and South Ural Railways, with their 6.8% increase.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of nongovernmental financial organizations’ deposits in Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank valid for 91 to 180 days went down by 85.29% (from 34 million RUR to 5 million RUR) in January-May 2008.

Sverdlovsk Region’s Ministry of Trade, Food, and Services hosted a number of business meetings with top executives of Metro’s Moscow headquarters and heads of forty-five regional enterprises that deal in manufacturing of both foods and nonfood items and wholesale trade. The meeting was coordinated by Minister Vera Solovieva, who said that Sverdlovsk Region’s two Metro Cash & Carry stores had thirty-seven agreements with the local producers (including thirty contracts signed with plants and seven contracts signed with the wholesalers). The Minister felt signing an agreement with Metro was

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank to for-profit SROs for 31 to 90 days went down by 61.69% (from 495.91 million RUR to 189.961 million RUR) in January-May 2008.

Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Vladimir Kritskiy and acting Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region’s Department of Internal Affairs Galina Karabonalova coordinated a briefing on the housing problems of law-enforcement officers. ‘A tender was held in July 2004 to decide who was going to put up the apartment block in Bazoviy Lane meant for our officers. The land allotment belongs to Yekaterinburg’s Department of Internal Affairs; as for the builder, Mayak Corporation was chosen. The developer promised to put up four apartment buildings with the total area of at least 52,000 square meters. 25% of

The volume of SKB-Bank’s net assets increased by 2 billion RUR over one month and came to 33.15 billion RUR on June 1, 2008 compared with only 31.11 billion RUR on May 1, 2008. The bank’s loan portfolio amounted to more than 23 billion RUR, thus doubling between June 2007 and June 2008. The bank had managed to attract 29 billion RUR in terms of deposits and investments by June 1, 2008, which is 3 billion RUR better than a month earlier. The figure includes 11.5 billion RUR worth of private individuals’ investments. SKB-Bank’s own funds come to more than 5 billion RUR at the moment, which is

Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (aka NTMK, part of Evraz Group) organized a series of celebrations dedicated to the 45th anniversary of Russia’s first LD plant. The events were attended by employees of over thirty metallurgical enterprises and research institutes based in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, and other Russian cities, as well as representatives of metallurgical and machine-building enterprises located in Ukraine, Austria, and Germany. The agenda of the festivities included a solemn meeting devoted to the launch of the steel-smelting converter – the second fully renovated converter out

Chelyabinsk-based SOT, a company dealing in production of pipeline bends and part of Rimera (ChTPZ Group’s O&G maintenance division), has been successfully audited by TUF International Rus for its compliance with the ISO 9001:2000 quality management requirements. The annual audit helps the enterprise to find quality management system’s improvement strategies. SOT keeps on working on the better quality of products and greater customer satisfaction. ‘Rimera pays a lot of attention to the quality of its produce, this is why all of its divisions have some special technical development

1,127 crediting organizations with a total of 3,940 subsidiaries have been registered within Russia by June 1, 2008, the Central Bank’s official website states. This figure signals an ongoing tendency for the number of banks to go down: there were 1,129 banks with 3,492 subsidiaries in Russia as recently as May 1, 2008. At the same time, while the number of banks is on the decrease, the volume of their authorized capital keeps rising. The figure reached 780 billion RUR on June 1, 2008 compared with 775 billion RUR in May 2008 and 773 billion RUR in April 2008. As for the distribution