Evraz Group was forced to put off its rail facilities reconstruction program at Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK) last year, Evraz Group President Alexander Frolov said in his interview to Kommersant. ‘Before the start of the recession, we were planning to renovate two of our works – the one in Nizhniy Tagil and the one in Novokuznetsk. Now we have to limit our efforts to the latter. We are to invest about ?300m in Novokuznetsk Iron & Steel Works over the next three years. ?50m have already been spent on advance payments for the machinery this year. As a matter of fact, we

OOO A-Service placed an application with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court, asking to declare OAO UralTransBank bankrupt. This news is available from the court’s official reports. According to these reports, A-Service has already managed to obtain over 1.38 million RUR worth of unjust enrichment from the bank. The court states that this money was taken out of the plaintiff’s account by the bank as soon as A-Service had been declared insolvent. A-Service claims UralTransBank had no legitimate grounds for direct debiting. OOO A-Service was declared bankrupt on March 5, 2010 and is now

Alatyr shopping mall’s recreation area was partially closed a few days ago. ‘Our movie theater and the food court are working as usual, and the bowling will resume operating soon. However, we no longer have the former children’s play area known as the Entertainment Galaxy,’ the mall’s managers informed UrBC but refused to provide any explanations. Alatyr was set up in Yekaterinburg at the end of 2009. The mall’s key tenants are Media Markt (the German electronic goods chain store), Carousel hypermarket, and Cinema Park Movie Theater.

X5 Retail Group, the company that runs Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, and Carousel supermarket chains, recently announced that Carousel was about to re-launch its customer loyalty program through offering its Magic Card discount cards for sale. As it happens, Yekaterinburg-based Carousel supermarkets located in Park House and Alatyr malls stopped accepting the regular customer cards in March 2010, despite the fact that the customers had actually paid to get them. At first, the new loyalty scheme will only be available in Moscow and Moscow Region; by the summer of 2010, the scheme will be fully

On June 1, 2010, Ural Airlines will offer its customers a new flight to the South of Russia. This Moscow-Gelendzhik flight is to be operated on a modern and comfortable A 320 aircraft under the following timetable. The plane to Gelendzhik leaves Domodedovo Airport of Moscow at 9:45 AM every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday and arrives in Gelendzhik at 11:50 AM. On Sundays, the plane leaves Domodedovo at 2:10 PM and lands in Gelendzhik at 4:10 PM. The plane back to Moscow takes off in Gelendzhik at 1:20 every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday and lands in Domodedovo at 3:25 PM. On Sundays, the plane

The net loss of Moscow Bank for Reconstruction and Development rose by 796.197 million RUR, or 998.1%, in the first quarter of 2010. The loss figures increased from 88.65 million RUR in the last quarter of 2009 to 884.847 million RUR in the first quarter of 2010. The bank explains this rise of net loss has to do with the one-time installment of the possible loan loss reserves worth 957 million RUR. The reserves had to be set up in order to back up the bank’s large-scale loans in compliance with the Central Bank of Russia’s Provision No 254-P adopted on March 26, 2004. The Provision states the

The Chairman of the Federal Trade Union of the Russian Air Dispatchers’ Ural division Mikhail Abramov was recently asked to pay a visit to the regional public prosecution authorities’ transportation unit. According to Mr. Abramov, the authorities only wanted to be put into the picture. ‘They asked me to explain what was going on among the air dispatchers at the airport. I told them they wanted to support their colleagues from Rostov-on-Don and so went on strike to show their sympathy for the case,’ he said. The clash between the management and the trade union, which started in March 2010,

Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of OAO Alfa-Bank) has been found guilty of an administrative offense recently. Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Market Service declared that the bank must pay a 500,000-ruble fine. According to the Service, the bank failed to comply in due time with the orders issued by the federal executive authorities regarding its stock market activity.

The volume of deposits opened by private, for-profit organizations at Uralfinance Commercial Bank for 91 to 180 days more than halved in February 2010 and thus went down from 30.7 million RUR on February 1, 2010 to 15.02 million RUR on March 1, 2010. These data are available from the bank’s report placed on the Central Bank of Russia’s official website. In addition, the deposits of profit-making organizations opened for 1 to 3 years plunged by 100%; the figures decreased from 1.792 million RUR on February 1, 2010 to 0 RUR on March 1, 2010.

A twenty-two-year-old mine worker was killed in UC RUSAL Severouralsk bauxite mine’s Cheremukhovskaya mine. RUSAL’s representative in Ural Federal District Roman Lukichev says the worker was smashed by an electric locomotive under unclear circumstances. The causes of the accident are to be investigated by an ad hoc committee consisting of Rostechnadzor representatives and UC RUSAL experts.

The volume of loans offered by ZAO Uralprivatbank to private individuals for 91 to 180 days went down by 100% in February 2010. The figures dropped from 142,000 RUR on February 1, 2010 to 0 RUR on March 1, 2010. These data are available from the bank’s report placed on the Central Bank of Russia’s official website.

The latest meeting of the regional committee on government support to local businesses was devoted to the efforts currently made by OAO VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation and OAO SUAL (BAZ-SUAL’s subsidiary) to increase their tax payments to Sverdlovsk Region’s consolidated budget. The meeting was chaired by Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin. It was observed that VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation was trying to cut down on its indispensable payments. Even though the sales revenues only went down a little, the company’s net profit decreased by 3.2 times, which affected the amount of tax due to

Some new managing directors have recently been appointed to Evraz Group’s Urals-based enterprises – Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise (VGOK) and Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise (KGOK, aka Vanadium). The new managers were introduced to their personnel by Evraz Vice President and Head of Ore Division Konstantin Lagutin. VGOK will now be run by former head of the enterprise’s Lebyazhinskiy sintering plant Andrei Kuznetsov. The company’s ex-Managing Director Sergey Napolskikh has been appointed the top executive of Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing

The air traffic controllers of Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport are still on hunger strike. ‘They went on hunger strike on April 11, 2010 in order to support their colleagues in Rostov-on-Don and to make sure the management makes some changes to the collective agreement. As it is, the agreement contains some violations of the Labor Code,’ the trade unions’ lawyer Elena Goncharova said to a UrBC reporter. ‘The top executives of Ural Air Navigation, Transport Ministry, the federal aviation services, and trade union representatives met in Moscow on April 6, 2010. Unfortunately, this meeting

Calculated in accordance with the IAS, the net profit of United Company RUSAL amounted to $821m last year, compared with $5.98bn worth of net profit in the year 2008, the company’s official release states. RUSAL’s revenues went down by 48% in the year 2009 and came to $8.16bn. The company says this had to do with the decreasing aluminum prices and shrinking sales volumes. The enterprise’s aluminum output was 11% smaller in the year 2009 than in the year 2008 and only reached 3.9 million tons as the production at the least profitable facilities had to be cut back on. Then, the alumina output

The number of Russian travel agents might drop by 15% by the start of the summer season 2010, Kommersant claims. Judging by the data provided by Rostourism, 649 Russian Federation-based companies were unable to renew their financial guarantees recently. These are mostly small provincial operators that cannot afford to pay the high insurance fees of 280,000 to 300,000 RUR a year. 342 out of these 649 travel agents mainly deal in providing services to foreigners coming to Russia, 74 companies sell tours abroad to Russian citizens, and 233 agents do both. The operators were supposed to have

The stockholders of Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation decided to let its two major production assets Uralmashzavod and ORMETO-YUMZ develop outside the joint venture framework. The two newly independent companies are to focus on further specialization and the implementation of their own investment programs. The corporation was set up in 2007. The founders now explain that the market opportunities three years ago made it necessary for Uralmashzavod and ORMETO-YUMZ to unite in terms of produce marketing, production distribution, and capital investment.

The volume of loans offered by Bank24.ru to private individuals for the period of 91 to 180 days went down by 25.2% in February 2010. The figures decreased from 524,000 RUR on February 1, 2010 to 392,000 RUR on March 1, 2010. These data are available from the bank’s report uploaded on the Central Bank of Russia’s official website.

The Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) completed its multi-faceted inspection of Evraz Holding’s Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK), the spokesperson for the division reports. The inspecting committee detected and ordered to eliminate forty-two violations of industrial safety regulations at the plant. The inspectors compiled twenty-six administrative offense protocols involving the plant’s management and two protocols regarding the plant as a legal entity.

Ural Airlines’ customers can now book their tickets eighteen hours before the flight, rather than the previously required minimum of twenty-four hours. This service is only available if one pays via Yandex.dengi or Web-Money systems or by credit cards. Tickets can be booked at www.uralairlines.com. For any additional information, one is welcome to call the airline’s Passenger Support Service at 8 800 2000 262.