Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won in the first municipal landscaping contest. The competition was held for the industrial, building, and production enterprises; these were assessed on the basis of their premises’ landscaping and site finishing level, the beauty of lawns of flower beds, recreational development, the availability and cleanliness of parking lots and rubbish bins, the exterior of the buildings, the design of a business’s sign plates and adverts, and the company’s participation in Magnitogorsk’s environmental and urban development programs. All the contestants had to

The construction of the battery room’s casing was completed by SUBRStroy at Novo-Kalyinskaya mine of Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR). The site is currently occupied by the experts of RUS Engineering now that the subcontractors have done their job. Says RUS Engineering’s site foreman Nikolai Vdovkin: ‘I’d say we have plenty of work to do. Right now we are busy assembling the central heating and communication systems and finishing out the interior. Next week, the heating will be launched, and by the end of December, we’ll have had the battery room commissioned. This is bound to be a grand

Sberbank of Russia’s Ural branch has issued three million bank cards by December 2008, with over 700,000 cards offered to customers in 2008 alone. Sberbank of Russia issues and deals with MasterCard and Visa cards as well as Sbercart, the Russian system. ‘The increase in the number of cards is accompanied by the dynamic expansion of servicing infrastructure. For one, thee bank runs over 900 cash terminals, 1,675 ATMs, and 462 information & transaction terminals in all the areas of its economic presence. This means our customers can get their cash, top up their bank card account, and make

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (ChTPZ Group’s largest tube and pipe manufacturers) supplied their consumers with 1.45 million tons of tubular goods in January-November 2008, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 1.756 million tons) by 17%. ChTPZ sold 773,200 tons of tubes and pipes in eleven months of the year, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 973,800 tons) by 21%. These figures include 379,300 tons of large-diameter pipes. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant delivered 35,700 tons of tubular goods to

Ural Airlines keeps implementing its aircraft upgrade and replacement program; the carrier has recently leased one more Airbus A320 which is nine years old and used to be driven by ClikAir (the Spanish low-cost airline and Iberia’s daughter enterprise). Prior to handing the airplane over to Ural Airlines, the aircraft had undergone a two-month preparation. Airbus was painted the new owner’s corporate colors; the inside of the plane and the luggage area were fully replaced, and the older standard seats were substituted by 162 improved REСARO leather armchairs, the spokesperson for Ural

Rus-Bank-Ural started paying compensation to Kurgan-based Kurganprombank’s depositors on December 11, 2008. This was made possible after the Deposit Insurance Agency declared that Rus-Bank was the winner among all the potential agent banks that would be involved in making compensation payments to the customers of Kurganprombank. Kurganprombank was had joined in the deposit insurance system and had its license annulled on November 27, 2008. This was seen as an insured event in accordance with the federal bill on the insurance of private individuals’ deposits in Russian Federation’s banks. The

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin suggested in the course of President Dmitriy Medvedev’s meeting with Ural Federal District’s Governors that a so-called infrastructure decade should be proclaimed and implemented in the country. ‘I believe that it behooves the government at the time of a crisis to focus its economic efforts on the total reconstruction of our road and transport infrastructure and the building industry. The infrastructure decade would be of paramount importance,’ he said. The Governor also said that Chelyabinsk Region’s strategic development needed some powerful backup

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has successfully undergone the environmental management audit procedure aimed at checking the system’s compliance with the ISO 14001-2004 international standards. The audit was carried out by Germany-based TUV NORD CERT GmbH. The procedure involved sixteen production departments, with both directors and employees showing a lot of improvements, meeting all the environmental goals for 2008, and exposing good skills of using the environmental management system in process control. TUV NORD CERT’s experts came to the conclusion that MMK’s environmental

Seven Ural Federal District-based banks were featured in RBC.Rating’s list of the country’s top hundred largest banks in terms of net asset volume in January-September 2008. Three of these banks are located in Tyumen Region, another three – in Sverdlovsk Region, and one bank is based in Chelyabinsk Region. SKB-Bank was given the 72nd position in the rating. RBC.Rating’s analysts report the bank’s net asset volume had come to more than 36.901 billion RUR by September 2008, which was 29% better than at the beginning of the year. The figure also secured SKB-Bank’s three-point promotion in the

A Bracker hydraulic press meant for testing pipes under pressure has recently been upgraded at Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant’s OCTG shop. The upgrading program included the installation of the new hydraulic power station and the replacement of the high-pressure units in order to avoid any hydraulic impact during the test hydraulic impacting process and to make the machinery more effective and reliable. The upgrading means the pressure can be made higher for the testing, which, in its turn, will result in a wider range of tubular products the plant will be able to offer its customers. The

Bank Monetniy Dom (formerly known as Mechel-Bank) reports its CONTACT money orders are now available from Finland. The international system’s outlets were introduced in Helsinki at the end of November 2008, with over 5,900 new access points launched all over the world since the beginning of the year. ‘CONTACT is becoming increasingly popular both in Russia and abroad, so the list of cities where the service is available keeps getting longer. For one, the system’s 2,800 new outlets were introduced in 500 more cities between September 15, 2008 and November 30, 2008. Most of these were set up in

Business customers opened 1,460 accounts in SKB-Bank in November 2008, whereas a month earlier, 1,118 accounts were opened, and 761 accounts were set up in September 2008. ‘This record actually fits the pattern of the general trend. We get more new customers every month, and almost every opening of a bank account is accompanied by an e-banking agreement. This means we get more than new accounts, what we get is the new economically active customers,’ says SKB-Bank’s Business Development Director Evgeniy Pavlov. The bank executive reports the customers are attracted to SKB-Bank because it keeps

Alfa-Bank sustained 7.96 billion RUR worth of losses in November 2008, Vedomosti reports. At the same time, the figure came to 103.7 million RUR in October 2008. Alfa-Bank bought Bank Severnaya Kazna’s controlling shareholding on November 30, 2008, which is to result in loss of independence by the latter. An Alfa-Bank representative quoted by the newspaper explained that the decrease in profits had to do with having to build up on the lending portfolio reserves and to reassess the cost of the business’s securities.

Ural Airlines has recently introduced a passenger support service. Any of the company’s customers can call 8-800-2000-262 to find out about the timetable and pricing policies, book tickets or order extra services as well as learn about any other flight-related issues. ‘Ural Airlines’ call center has acquired both a new name and more skilled personnel. All the calls are now handled by experts who undergo continuous training, while the passenger support service is targeted at dealing with each caller individually. This means that, whatever his or her problem, every passenger is sure to get a

Bank24.ru came up with its financial recovery plan, the bank’s official website reports. ‘Things have by now become smooth again. Bank24.ru is busy implementing a whole range of financial recovery measures,’ the bank says. Bank24.ru’s website says the agreement to this extent was signed by Deposit Insurance Agency, Probusinessbank (Life Group’s leading bank), and Bank24.ru on December 4, 2008. According to the terms of this agreement, Bank24.ru’s financial recovery is to be handled by Probusinessbank. According to their action plan, the bank’s management expects all of the bank’s services to

‘The first prize in our Gold Deposit business customer offer comes to 104,290 RUR at the moment. This is the cost of the gold accumulated since the beginning of the special offer’s term. The weight of the prize keeps growing, and so does the number of business who chose to work with the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development,’ the spokesperson for the bank said to an UrBC reporter. ‘Gold will keep adding up until December 29, 2008. The prize will thus keep being accumulated from November 24, 2008 to December 29, 2008. The weight of the gold prize depends on the number of accounts opened

Bank Severnaya Kazna reports that no interest will be paid on the settlement account balance beginning from December 18, 2008.

Ural Airlines is going to reduce the fuel fees for a number of international flights on January 11, 2009. For one, fees will go down for Yekaterinburg-Munich, Yekaterinburg-Paris, and Yekaterinburg-Prague flights. The fees for Yekaterinburg-Munich and Yekaterinburg-Paris flights will be halved and will thus come to only ?50. The fee for the Prague-bound flight will go down by ?25 and will thus amount to ?45. This isn’t the first time the airline has reduced its fuel fees, actually. In addition to the latest discounts, Ural Airlines kept decreasing the fuel fees for its chartered flights,

Webscan Technologies published the findings of its research on the brands most frequently referred to or mentioned in the Web’s Russian-speaking segment. According to the company’s data, allusions to 960 banks located in sixty different countries were tracked on over 3,700 online newswires, while the Top 100 most frequently mentioned banks’ rating was compiled on the basis of data supplied by Webscan N&P between January 1, 2008 and November 30, 2008. The rating carried the names of large foreign and federal banks as well as a number of provincial ones, with SKB-Bank getting the 48th

Fitch и Moody's report URSA Bank’s Rating Outlooks have been promoted due to the stockholders’ decision to unite in a holding with MDM-Bank, the bank’s press officer reports. Fitch affirmed the bank’s short-term Issuer Default Rating at B+ and gave it a Rating Watch Positive. The agency reports the proposed merger will enable the two banks to build up on their strengths in the business and retail market segments as well as to open up a whole range of brand new advantages through expanded customer base, greater size, and more pronounced risk diversification. Moody's has also affirmed