OAO Severstal insists that OAO Uralvagonzavod starts making a 100% prepayment on its rolled metal products orders starting the last quarter of 2010, Kommersant reports. A letter explaining this demand was sent to Uralvagonzavod the day before. The change in the terms of contract was brought about by the ‘serious payment deadline problems on the part of the plant without any explanations as to the reasons for such practices’. The metallurgical enterprise’s representative refused to quote the exact amount of debt but did say that the deadline had been missed by eight days as of September 9,

OAO Ural Airlines has recently been declared Russia’s leading air carrier. The winners of the 6th Golden Chariot National Transport Prize were awarded in the course of a solemn ceremony in Moscow. The prize was introduced by the State Duma’s Energy, Transport & Communications Committee and Russia’s Transportation Ministry. A board of experts picked out the best companies among several hundred transportation enterprises and awarded prizes in several categories related to the country’s various transportation branches. Ural Airlines won the prize in the Russia’s Leading Air Carrier category.

RENOVA-StroyGroup’s Academic construction project won the first prize in the Master Plan category on the Russian stage of Fiabci Prix D'exellence International Contest. Fiabci Prix D'Excellence is one of the world’s most prestigious real estate competitions run by FIABCI (the International Real Estate Federation) since 1992. The main idea behind the contest is to single out the best objects and to look into the new development trends on the real estate market. ‘Our victory was not sheer luck. Academic is both Russia and Eruope’s largest housing construction project, with its unique

‘Car dealers are now selling dubious cars alongside with the good ones; as a result, even the purchase of an automobile declared as new cannot guarantee the customers that they are buying a vehicle that really hasn’t been, say, involved in a crash. Now the law states that a seller must warn the customers about all the defects a car might have. Still, there are cases when a car is claimed to be brand new when it’s not, so the customer gets no warning whatsoever. So, in the end a newly bought ‘brand new car’ somehow won’t start,’ Vice President of All-Russian Consumer Protection League Andrei

The bank’s BOD decided on September 7, 2010 that eight of its subsidiaries would be converted into regular operational offices. The change will involve Rus-Bank’s representations in Kaliningrad, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Penza, Kazan, Astrakhan, Kurgan, and Kursk.

OAO MegaFon, a mobile operator, keeps expanding the range of services available through its video portal. The company now offers over thirty different channels to smartphone/Android users. People whose phones support Android can enjoy the specially created Video Portal to watch the channels without having to download the service mobile website; they can also administer their subscriptions, subscribe to and unsubscribe to channels, and create the Favorite Programs list. The software can be downloaded either through Android Market or via wap.megafonpro.ru in the Video Portal section. By

Ural Airlines is going to keep operating its Yekaterinburg-Barcelona flight in winter for the first time this year. In the summertime, the flight was operated twice a week and proved extremely popular with passengers. In the second half of the year, the flight will be operated every Saturday. This is, in fact, not the only scheduled Europe-bound flight the airline offers for the winter 2010-2011. The carrier will also operate flights to Rome, Prague, Munich, Paris, and Salzburg.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into OAO Avtoland’s bankruptcy case. The hearing, however, had to be postponed until October 19, 2010 because the plaintiff had to provide the court with some additional documents, the court’s press officer reports. The company’s stockholders decided on May 27, 2010 that their business should go into liquidation, so a liquidation committee was set up for the purpose. The committee placed OAO Avtoland’s insolvency application with the court in June 2010; the application was grounded on the fact that the company had not been making any profit

Deposit Insurance Agency, a state-run corporation, predicts the interest rates offered on ruble bank deposits will keep going down during the rest of 2010 as well as in the year 2011. ‘The interest rates offered by Russia’s largest banks on ruble deposits will have equaled the current inflation rate by the end of the year. This is the conclusion that can be drawn from looking at the private individuals’ deposits dynamics: these deposits are coming in stably and en masse, so our banks just don’t know where to direct this money flow. To counterbalance the influx, they will have to lower the

The First Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art, dubbed Shockworkers of the Mobile Image. Fifty-nine works by fifty-four artists from Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, Spain, Mexico, Poland, the United States, Finland, and China are displayed. The exhibition’s main venue is the building of Ural Worker Printing Press at 49 Lenin St. Visitors to the show can see production prints, copies, and reproductions, as well as bits of video, documentaries, and feature films. The biennale’s site-specific projects are housed at Yekaterinburg’s four largest

OAO SKB-Bank launched five new ATMs in different Russian cities last week; three of them are located in Sverdlovsk Region. The citizen of Nevyansk can now use the 24/7 ATM at Machine-Building Plant at 2 Oktyabrskiy Ave. and the machine that is available from 9 AM to 10 PM at 8a Malyshev St. In Irbit, a 24/7 ATM can be found in Vostok shopping mall at 12a Marshal Zhukov St. Another 24/7 ATM can now be found at 46 Remisov St. in Tobolsk; finally, the machine was introduced in the bank’s newly opened office at 15 Lenin St. in Irkutsk. Each of SKB-Bank’s ATMs allows the cardholder to take out

Rosselkhoznadzor (the state agricultural watchdog) imposed some temporary bans on the import of meat from seven farms based in Brazil, the United States, Argentina, and Poland on September 8, 2010. The ban has to do with the prohibited and harmful substances detected in the foods supplied by the companies, RIA Novosti reports. The ban involves four Brazilian enterprises run by JBS S/A, the U.S. Swift Beef Company, the Polish Zaklad Przemyslu Miesnego Biernacki, and JBS ARGENTINA SA. Brazilian veterinary authorities promised to Rosselkhoznadzor in October 2009 that all the Russian veterinary

‘Fifteen to twenty people are killed in Sverdlovsk Region’s mining and metallurgical enterprises every year; in 2009, fifty-one people were also seriously injured. In any case, it’s too early to speak of decreasing casualty figures just now: a tragedy can happen any minute, with new names added to the list,’ says A. Sokolov of Russia’s Mining & Metallurgical Trade Union. ‘Most accidents happen at enterprises which employ a large number of workers. For one, Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise (VGOK) and Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK) are two of the most

OAO Svoboda Cosmetics Company will have to pay a 4.97-million-ruble fine for unfair competition, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled. The Service declared that the company had violated Article 14 (part1, paragraph 4) of the Federal Competition Protection Act through the market launch of a hand cream whose packaging carried images nearly the same as those of the registered trademark No. 383251. The trademark belongs to OAO Concern Kalina. The fact that the Service confirmed the violation of Article 14 (part1, paragraph 4) of the Federal Competition Protection Act serves a legal ground

OAO Ural Airlines business class passengers can now enjoy the new service of a tea list – a selection of several kinds of exceptional quality tea in exquisite packaging that can be complemented with lemon, cream, or cognac. The company’s flight attendants can now offer the passengers the traditional black English Breakfast, Assam, and bergamot-flavored Earl Grey teas as well as the green kinds: Green Sencha and Jasmine Blossom or fruit tea with wild rose and hibiscus. ‘We’d like to note that, apart from the tea list choices, our passengers can also enjoy a wide range of beverages and strong

Rostechnadzor (the state technological, environmental, and nuclear safety watchdog) is to carry out a scheduled inspection of OAO UralChem United Chemical Company. The agency intends to check the enterprise and its daughter companies’ compliance with the safety rules; the order to this extent has already been signed by Rostechnadzor’s management. The inspection at Voskresenskiye mineral fertilizers company and the mineral fertilizers plant of Kirovo-Chepetsk chemical works will start on September 6, 2010 and must be completed by October 1, 2010. OAO Azot will be undergoing inspection from

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court supported the ruling pronounced by the region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) against Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport. Rospotrebnadzor insisted that the airport create a special protective sanitary zone on its premises. Now the airport took legal action in order to contest Rospotrebnadzor’s order 01-01-15-09-05/6522 regarding its alleged non-compliance with the sanitary norms that was issued by the agency on January 20, 2009. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court partially sustained the airport’s claim as to

A fatal accident at Evraz Group’s Yestyuninskaya mine left one person dead this morning, head of Sverdlovsk Region Department of Internal Affairs’ press service Valeriy Gorelykh informed UrBC. The news was reported to Nizhniy Tagil’s Leninskiy Department of Internal Affairs at 7:45 AM; A fact-finding police work team and a representative of the public prosecutions department’s Investigative Committee arrived at the scene at once. It was detected that the victim of the accident was a forty-two-year-old overman named Sergey Sidorov. The man’s body was found in the crushing section area;

The Titanic Cinema, a movie theater located in Greenwich Trade & Entertainment Center in Yekaterinburg, now has a new owner. OAO VUZ-Bank sold the movie theater to ZAO Profit Cinema. The shopping mall’s management expects positive changes only, since the business was never a core one for the bank, whereas Profit Cinema runs a movie theater network throughout the entire country. ‘No changes for the worse are likely to occur. We hope for better things, because this movie theater is going to be the investor’s core asset. VUZ-Bank treated this business as a secondary one. We also hope that

OOO Koltso Urala Commercial Bank came up with some much improved consumer loan offers: the interest rates on all the loans for private individuals have been decreased to 12% a year. The bank used to offer its loans for 19.9% a year, now it’s only 12%. The bank’s Retail Director Konstantin Bogatyrev explains the unprecedented drop in the interest rats is seen as a special offer for customers who need the money for a short time period. Most other banks usually offer such borrowers the so-called express loans: expensive loans for a short period of time. Koltso Urala came up with an alternative: