UniCredit Bank Austria AG announced it was going to acquire 10.72% of Concern Kalina’s shares. This is the first time the bank is to buy a holding in the concern’s authorized capital.

‘With the exception of Academic district, not a single housing construction project has been started in Yekaterinburg this year. This is also true of business centers, and, to be frank, I don’t think the building outputs will go back to ante-recession level or even keep up with this year’s figures,’ Chairman of Aston Construction Company Vyacheslav Trapeznikov said at a round table discussion coordinated by Ural Real Estate Chamber. ‘Most housing developers are now busy finishing their earlier projects. We ‘forced’ the banks to offer us additional loans to complete the construction of

Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg had been refusing some airlines ground handling and airport services with no good reason for doing so, Moscow District Federal Arbitration Court ruled on October 12, 2009. This ruling supported the earlier verdict of the Federal Antimonopoly Service. The Service declared on September 19, 2008 that Koltsovo Airport had violated Article 10 of the Federal Competition Protection Act by abusing its dominant position on the market. The airport was accused of refusing to sign ground handling and airport services agreements with a number of airlines. As Koltsovo is a

The Supreme Court of Italy decided to extradite Bank24.ru former BOD member Alexei Kalinichenko to Russia. The man is suspected of large-scale fraud, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports. The exact date of the extradition has not been announced yet. Kalinichenko is accused of setting up a financial pyramid scheme and of stealing over 100 million RUR from his investors. His charge (large-scale fraud) is based on Article 159 (part 4) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code. The former bank executive’s business activity involved

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK)’s shipment output dropped by 21% in January-August 2009 against January-August 2008 due to plummeting market demand in the first half of the year, the spokesperson for TMK says. Nevertheless, the company delivered 716,000 tons of steel pipes to consumers in the third quarter of 2009, which actually exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 15%. This decrease in shipments had to do with the gradually recovering demand for tubes and pipes as well as with the company winning a larger share of the market.

Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov and Head of Sverdlovsk Region Railways Vladimir Suprun visited Uraltrubprom, Pervouralsk-based pipe manufacturer, on October 9, 2009. The executives examined the plant’s electric-welded pipe equipment, including Mill 630. The plant’s managers told the officials about the difficulties of implementing the plant’s second development stage. Suprun said the overload Pervouralsk station was experiencing was a major hindrance on the way to the project launch. ‘This railway station needs to be reconstructed and made longer; this would allow for

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court resumed hearing of the claim laid by AKB Rosbank against Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Enterprise on October 9, 2009. The plaintiff insists on being paid 167 million RUR, the spokesperson for the court says. The bank wants Uralvavonzavod to pay them 167,494,076.1 RUR, of which 163,219,000.64 RUR is the enterprise’s debt resulting from the promissory notes UVZ No 0004761-0004776 issued on March 27, 2009. The notes have to be paid no earlier than the set deadline. The remaining 2,137,534.73 RUR and 2,137,534.73 RUR make up the interest and the

The officers of Volga and Urals Military District are going to receive their housing certificates on October 13, 2009. These certificates will signify their property rights over 716 new apartments in Yekaterinburg’s newest Academic district, the spokesperson for the District reports. The solemn certificate-awarding ceremony will be attended by the District’s Commander of Troops Lieutenant General Arkadiy Bakhin, General Director of Renova-StroyGroup-Akademicheskoye Alexei Vorobiev, and regional and municipal administrations representatives. The Russian Federation Ministry of Defense bought

The vehicle and machinery manufacturer is only using 40% of its full industrial capacity at the moment; the future of the company’s contract with Russian Railways Public Company looks bleak; to make matters worse, the enterprise has no other customers at the moment. This information is available from Sverdlovsk Region’s socioeconomic development report for 2010-2012. This report has been confirmed by the regional government.

Russia’s machine-building giant is only using 15% of its full industrial capacity at the moment, Sverdlovsk Region’s socioeconomic development report for 2010-2012 says. This report has been confirmed by the regional government.

‘Given the increasing competition among its airlines, Russia does not really need to introduce more hub airports,’ Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Valeriy Okulov said at the 7th International Russian Wings conference. Okulov explained some of the Russian airports simply failed to work, while others managed to keep up with the quality and could therefore hope to outlive the recession, ITAR-TASS quoted the executive as saying. ‘We just don’t need all these impressive-looking projects providing for numerous hubs, this isn’t going to happen.’ he observed. ‘A hub airport in the west of Russia

The net losses of Life Group’s VUZ-Bank rose from 19.722 million RUR in the second quarter of the year to 37.61 million RUR in the third quarter. The bank explains this had to do with the need to build up on the bad debt reserves, that is, to raise them up to 51.251 million RUR.

‘Excessively high employee turnover has always been Concern Kalina’s major problem. The company does not comply with the Labor Code regulations, and the firing process is way too easy there,’ says Alexei Slyazin of Sverdlovsk Region Federation of Trade Unions. ‘The picket aimed at protesting against the company’s policy went through okay. It had actually been authorized by the mayor. We were standing opposite Kalina’s building with posters that read, ‘Concern Kalina is a workforce grinder,’ ‘If you are afraid of control, you’ve got something to hide,’ ‘Goryaev claims to be proud of Labor Code

The value of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s assets went down by 3,228,189,000 RUR, or 10.31% (from 31303,971,000 RUR on July 1, 2009 down to 28,075,782,000 RUR on October 1, 2009). The reasons for the decline were the bank’s shrinking lending portfolio and outflow of money from the bank’s correspondent accounts.

The Russian Federation State Labor Inspectorate received an official request to prosecute METRO Cash & Carry’s management for Labor Code violations, Sverdlovsk Region’s trade unions news bulletin says. The labor inspectors from Sverdlovsk Region Federation of Trade Unions examined the working conditions in this multinational corporations’ Yekaterinburg subsidiary in April 2009. They detected numerous labor code offenses such as lack of compensation or longer holidays for people involved in hazardous activities, no attempts to improve on the microclimate of refrigerator departments, and no

‘It took me a long time to understand why Enel OGK-5 has organized public hearings that do not comply with the existing legislation. Having read the comments you gave to the media, I can now see that you actually admit you don’t know the Russian laws and that you never presented any environmental estimates of the plant’s activity at these hearings,’ Chairman of the International Socio-Environmental Union Vladimir Terekhov says in his letter to Enel OGK-5 PR Director Vasiliy Zakharov. What Zakharov actually said was that the multi-faceted evaluation of their company’s environmental impact was

The volume of loans offered by Uraltransbank to private for-profit organizations despite overdraft went down by 24.28% (from 104.396 million RUR to 79.041 million RUR) in August 2009.

On October 7, 2009, the Supreme Court of Italy is to consider the Russian authorities’ appeal against the Italian court’s refusal to extradite Bank24.ru’s former BOD member Alexei Kalinichenko. The former executive is suspected of large-scale fraud, says the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The extradition request was placed with the Italian authorities by the Russian Federation General Prosecutor’s Office international legal cooperation department on July 3, 2008. By then, Kalinichenko had already been detained by the Italian Interpol

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by the Federal Tax Service against Aston Construction Company. The Service’s local division (based in Yekaterinburg’s Verkh-Isetskiy district) asked the court to declare the builder insolvent, as the company’s tax debts had run up to 953,880 RUR over the last thee months. The defendant has not provided the court with any comments or data so far.

Trade union activists are going to picket Yekaterinburg-based office buildings of Concern Kalina and Uralplastik on World Action Day, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Trade Unions Federation reports. ‘In both companies, the workers are trying to set up trade unions despite the management’s disapproval. Kalina’s top executives have always been against employee self-organization, even though the right to join a trade union is guaranteed to every Russian citizen by the federal legislation. The management must remember, however, that it’s a free country that has no slaves doing only what