UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 19, 2010. Ural Airlines customers can now pay for the tickets booed via the company’s official website using Contact network. The service was launched in cooperation with Bilet-On-Line and now unites the entire booking and payment procedure into one convenient system. ‘Paying through Contact saves time because one can do several things at once, for example, do some shopping and buy tickets. One can also avoid the long queues in the booking offices. This is a convenient way of paying for people who don’t have an electronic wallet as well as for Visa Electron

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 19, 2010. OAO Maxi Group is going to take civil action against its minority shareholder Nikolai Maksimov within the framework of a criminal case investigation. The claim regarding damages was placed by Maxi Group with Sverdlovsk Region Department of Internal Affairs. The scale of the damages was determined by the value of a loan that had been partially given back to Maksimov (5.9 billion RUR), RBC daily reports. Now Nikolai Maksimov sent a letter to the Russian President; in it, he claims that the criminal case against him was a concocted one, and he believes the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 18, 2010. ‘Trying to introduce some urban sprawl is not worth the candle. It is a pointless thing to do; the sprawl won’t do any good. If there exists a worthy project, it is the one of Greater Yekaterinburg as a single municipality,’ Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy said at a press conference. At the same time, Mayor of Berezovskiy Vyacheslav Brozovskiy suggested that the fifteen satellites around Yekaterinburg should be merged into a mega-city. ‘The benefits of a merger are self-obvious, and our common sense must win. The only problem is that this

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 18, 2010. In the first half of 2010, the revenues of OAO Uralmashzavod decreased by 285.82 million RUR and amounted to 1,699,337,000 RUR against 1,983,331,000 RUR a year earlier, the plant’s report states. The greatest drop in revenues (by 163.57 million RUR) was felt in the oil and gas drilling machinery sector. On the other hand, the company’s net loss went down to 482.78 million RUR.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 18, 2010. X5 Retail Group N.V. opened its first Perekrestok supermarket in Yekaterinburg. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy and Vice Mayor Viktor Konteev. The total area of the store comes to 964 sq m, which is actually a bit smaller than the standard area of the chain’s outlets, that is, about 1,200 sq m. This is why the product range comprises only 12,000 items instead of the standard 16,000 items. ‘The current shopping space makes it impossible to display everything we have got. We are planning to expand in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 18, 2010. The 1st Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art (September 9, 2010 – October 10, 2010, Yekaterinburg) gives the locals a chance to voice their opinion of the city’s most hideous building. VOTE FOR DEMOLITION, the project of a Mexican artist Gustavo Artigas, is a study on how the local people see their own surroundings and on the democratic ways of changing the urban environment. The project is a survey on which buildings Yekaterinburg locals would like to see demolished/ destroyed. This August, twelve buildings were picked out by a board of experts –

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 18, 2010. The Ural division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) completed its field check of OAO Verkh-Isetskiy Metallurgical Plant’s compliance with the environmental legislation. Eight offenses were detected in the course of investigation, the spokesperson for Rosprirodnadzor reports, including one violation in the field of water bodies use and protection, five problems related to waste treatment, and two offenses in the field of free air protection. In order for the violations to be eliminated, the plant was given corresponding orders with

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2010. OAO Ural Airlines published a performance report for July and summed up its achievements in the seven months of 2010. The airline transported 982,115 passengers in January-July 2010, which exceeded the figures for January-July 2009 by 32%. 372,343 passengers used the company’s international flights, 468,937 people flew domestically, and 141, 222 passengers traveled to the countries of the CIS. The carrier operated 8,769 flights altogether, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 32%, including 2,748 international flights, 4,502 domestic flights,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2010. ‘A lot of food suppliers have set sky-high prices for some essential grocery items with no good reason lately. Auchan is currently negotiating with the suppliers and trying to restrain the prices as much as possible,’ Auchan Russia’s Purchasing Director Emin Rustamov informed UrBC. Two Auchan hypermarkets are currently run in Yekaterinburg.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2010. The assets of OAO Ural Railway Machine-Building Plant, including the realty and the intellectual property rights, are to be handed over to OOO Ural Locomotives through a corresponding purchase and sale transaction, the joint stock company’s information reports state. The transactions are worth a total of 5.95 billion RUR. At the same time, the assets of OAO Ural Railway Machine-Building Plant, were estimated at 6.34 billion RUR on March 31, 2010.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2010. ‘The forest fires and the draughts experienced by the better part of Russia’s agricultural regions is the reason the food manufacturers and suppliers have announced an increase in wheat and crops-based food items like bread, pastry, flour, pasta, and sunflower-seen oil as well as milk. The increase comes to 10% to 30% on the federal level and to 5% to 20% in the Urals,’ Metro Cash & Carry’s Corporate and Public Relations Director Oksana Tokareva said to UrBC reporters. ‘We started getting suggestions that the price for the said items should be raised

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2010. The revenues of LSR Group’s Betfor Concrete Goods Plant went down by 9.8%, or down to 307.03 million RUR, in the first half of 2010 compared with the first half of 2009. The company says the drop in revenues has to do with increased liquidity indicators as the plant has paid off a portion of its debts to suppliers.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 13, 2010. ‘My deputy Sergey Smetanyuk has been made responsible for the organization of the Ural and the Ukrainian Governors’ meeting,’ Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The city of Yekaterinburg is to host the meeting of the Ural Federal District’s officials and business communities with their Ukrainian counterparts in September 2010. The agenda of the summit provides for a plenary session, some panel and work groups meetings, and for a

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 13, 2010. ‘Yekaterinburg currently needs more visitors to come here. Our hotels should be at least 68% full and not only 50% full, as is the case at the moment, in order for the city’s conference halls to be used to the fullest. For all of this to become a reality, Yekaterinburg needs a re-branding campaign,’ Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev said at a recent meeting dedicated to commercial estate. ‘We need to create an awareness of Yekaterinburg as the best and the ‘one and only’ place in Monaco, Montreal, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. We must create

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 13, 2010. ‘The hotels are currently rather reluctant to provide the authorities with data on how many of their rooms are actually in use. We do know, however, that no more than 20% of the local hotels’ rooms were taken at the beginning of the year. This is particularly true of our new hotels. These figures result from the arrival of the new players on the market and from the increased competition. The hotels are making every effort to keep their rooms booked. They are, in fact, trying to entice the business group bookers away from each other by different means.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 12, 2010. ‘It’s rather difficult at the moment to get the new buildings launched. For one, Alatyr and Fan-Fan Shopping Malls had a hard time finding enough tenants for their shopping areas. ComsoMall Trade & Entertainment Center might also find it problematic to get plenty of tenants,’ Chairman of Ural Management Companies & Developers Council Alexei Karavayev said at a recent meeting dedicated to commercial estate. ‘This situation foreshadows the saturation of the market. This is exactly the reason why we need to introduce concept stores,’ he observed.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 12, 2010. ‘The recession has made us change our plans a bit and put a temporary halt on the construction process, but, nevertheless, we are planning to resume working on Iset Tower next to the Hyatt Hotel as soon as in the end of August, so as to launch the tower within the next three or three and a half years,’ OOO UMMC Holding’s Deputy General Director for Investment & Development Sergey Yerypalov informed UrBC. Iset Tower, an office facility, was supposed to have been launched at the end of 2008. The building was to have become Yekaterinburg City project’s

UrBC, Kaliningrad, August 12, 2010. Following the visit of the German car giant BMW AG top management to Kaliningrad-based car factory Avtotor, a decision was made to expand the automobile production output in Russia, partially through launching some newest makes, says the press officer of BaltAutoTrade, BMW and Volkswagen’s official dealer in Saint Petersburg. ‘BMW Russian dealers are faced with a shortage of certain car makes, this is why expanding the range of models produced locally at Avtotor in Kaliningrad will do the Russian market good,’ the press officer explains. The first BMW X1

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 12, 2010. Carbon monoxide, one of the most toxic components of the poisonous mix that is released in the air during fires, is gradually building up into a sort of ring in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Such was the conclusion made by NASA upon the basis of data provided by its Aqua satellite which is fitted wit a special infrared sensor. The carbon monoxide content comes to about 160:1,000,000,000 in these regions now; the main culprits are the forest and peat fires in Russia and Canada, RIA Novosti says. Scientists reported earlier that the total

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 12, 2010. In the first half of 2010, Moscow remained Russia’s No.1 city in terms of the number of customers buying new cars. 17.3% of all the new cars registered in Russia were registered in the capital. Moscow Region proved the second most active automobile-buying place in the country as usual, with 9.4% of all the new cars registered there. The data are provided by Avtostat. As for Saint Petersburg, 5.4% of all the newly bought automobiles were registered in this city, so the latter kept its status of the third most active car-buying area. Saint Petersburg was