The citizens of Krasnoturinsk, Sverdlovsk Region, keep trying to protect their rights over the company housing of UC RUSAL’s Bogoslovsky smelter in court. The locals are afraid that the plant might get them evicted from their apartments in case they get fired or retire. According to Sobesednik, people will probably be evicted even from the corporate dormitory-type accommodation. The court hearing is to begin this month. ‘The situation first changed when the plant became a joint stock company in 1992, and then changed even more dramatically when the business got a new proprietor and came to be

A number of Omega Group’s members have recently placed their bankruptcy applications with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court. The list includes OOO James and OOO Resta Management, the court’s website states. In fact, the Group’s OOO Alcomarket Magnum and OOO Alcomarket Magnum-4 were declared insolvent as early as September and October 2010, whereas in June 2010, Omega’s wholesale division OOO Omega Spirits Group was also declared bust. According to the data available from the court, Sberbank of Russia is still trying to make the Group members pay over 126 million RUR worth of debts. The

OAO VympelCom actually insists that no violations were involved in providing Internet access to Ivan Kadochnikov, a lawyer and one of the company’s Yekaterinburg-based customers. ‘Our company adheres strictly to all the terms of company-customer agreements. If Mr. Kadochnikov pays for the speed of 25 Mb per second, the Internet connection is provided at exactly this speed. We are going to look into Ivan Kadochnikov’s application at once. The company is going to check the access speed on his computer. If this turns out to be true that the actual speed does not coincide with the declared one,

OAO SverdlovEnergoSbyt, a power supplier, set a limit on the power supply of a Krasnouralsk-based state-run chemical plant. Only some limited amount of electric power is now delivered to the plant’s transportation department, storage facilities, and maintenance rooms. The supplier claims the plant fails to meet its contractual obligations, as it already owes SverdlovEnergoSbyt 17.4 million RUR and has over 85.2 million RUR worth of debts featured in its bankruptcy case into the bargain. The chemical plant hasn’t been paying its electricity bills since December 2009, SverdlovEnergoSbyt’s press

The number of people arriving in Sverdlovsk Region exceeded the number of those leaving the place by 2,900 people in January-September 2010. The migrant inflow decreased by 31% in nine months of 2010 compared with January-September 2009.

Four new hotels are expected to start operating in Yekaterinburg next year. These are: a third extension to the Atrium Palace Hotel in Belinsky St (eighty rooms), a hotel/apartment block in Grazhdanskaya St (one hundred rooms), and two mini hotels of ten rooms each at 27 Sverdlov St and 21 Kuznetsov St, says Deputy Mayor Viktor Konteev’s press officer Ilona Starodubtseva. Meanwhile, three hotels have already been opened in Yekaterinburg this year: the Novotel Hotel (two hundred rooms), the Sibirsky Tract Hotel (forty-six rooms), and a ten-room mini hotel called Park Vista. This means the city

The advertising campaign launched by a housing block Rodina (which stands for ‘Motherland’) in Yekaterinburg has shocked both the local citizens and the more conservative admen. Protest petitions asking for an investigation and the punishment of the culprits have already been placed with Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service. Apparently, the painful fines for the ad agency’s creative product will have to be paid by its partners. The ad campaign in question included introducing a series of billboards around the city that read, ‘We sell our motherland and pay for

ZAO RusLine Airlines called off two flights bound for Yekaterinburg – flight RG 4416 from Samara and flight RG 824 from Kiev, Yekaterinburg Koltsovo Airport’s interactive announcement board says. The plane from Kiev was to have landed in Yekaterinburg at 9:30 PM local time on November 10, 2010, the one from Samara was to have arrived at 2:40 PM. In fact, Samara-Yekaterinburg flight had already been delayed by over fourteen hours before. Today, RusLine delayed as many as three flights at once: the ones from Noviy Urengoy, Samara, and Mineralniye Vody. The air carrier’s Yekaterinburg office

‘The way we see it, putting up another premium class hotel in Yekaterinburg is a mere brand race. Yekaterinburg actually has more four-star hotels per head (of a local citizen) than any other Russian city, whereas the demand forecasts are not as rosy as we’d like. It’s simply impractical to put up another big hotel just in order to host guests during once-a-year international event like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last summer. Moreover, such a hotel is obviously unnecessary downtown where as many as seven high-class hotels are already located, including the international

‘The guests of Yekaterinburg hotels are largely people on business trips, who mostly choose a room on the basis of location and price. So, a hotel which is located in the business part of the city, is close to most transport links, and offers its rooms at a popular market price can definitely expect to have plenty of rooms taken. Now Radisson SAS is a hotel with a lot of rooms, great service, and above-the-average market price. It will therefore be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to find people willing to pay a double or triple price for a room when a much cheaper hotel is

Russia’s Federal Financial Market Service decided that the bond issue of OOO UTair Finance (Khanty-Mansiysk, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region) should be halted. The securities in question are series 04 interest-bearing certificated inconvertible pay-to-bearer bonds; the series public registration number is 4-04-36059-R as of May 27, 2008.

OAO Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank recently got a new shareholder Karolton Associates Limited. The company now co-owns 11.33% of the bank’s shares. A little while earlier, OAO Nomos-Bank reported it had acquired a 19.98% shareholding in the bank. Nomos-Bank actually bought 100% of OOO IST Capital that owns 19.98% of Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank’s shares. IST Capital is a member of Alexander Nesis’s IST Group, Nesis being one of Nomos-Bank’s major stockholders, the bank’s press officer explained. The acquisition of IST Capital was part of OAO Nomos-Bank shareholders’ bank assets consolidation campaign, the

‘There is no real need to put up another premium class hotel in Yekaterinburg. The city is still experiencing a shortage of inexpensive two-star establishments, while the five-star hotels are forced to take up the niche of the four-star ones and reduce their prices. A high-class hotel will still enjoy some demand in one way or another, that’s true, but it will lure away the other hotels’ clients, since not many more tourists are coming to Yekaterinburg now than before,’ the Voznesenzkiy Hotel’s Advertising & Marketing Manager Evgeniya Isachenko told UrBC. Nevertheless, the construction of

Sverdlovsk Region is going to consider buying some crops in Armenia and Ukraine, Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin announced at a recent government meeting on the region’s grain and flour supply and delivery. The region’s Deputy Minister for Agriculture Vladimir Grebnev informed the attendees that about 260,000 tons of grain or 200,000 tons of flour were required by the mid-Urals’ bread-making industry every year. ‘Our region can only provide for 10% of its own grain needs and depends directly on the pricing policies of the suppliers from the other Russian regions. We import

The Skolkovo Foundation produced an official statement on the new appointments in the business. It was confirmed that Mikhail Moshiashvili of Rostechnologii had been appointed the foundation’s CEO, while Viktor Maslakov, the General Director of ZAO Renova-StroyGroup, would become the city manager of Skolkovo. Finally, Renova’s HR Director Oleg Alekseev was appointed head of Research & Education Division. Viktor Maslakov originally comes from Yekaterinburg. He held positions in Sverdlovsk Region’s government bodies and was the region’s Deputy Minister for Economics & Labor, Deputy

Subway, the world’s largest franchise network of fast food restaurants, expects to be running 1,000 outlets in Russia by 2015. Subway’s general franchisee in Russia Subway Russia LLC is planning to extend its restaurant network to 160 units by the end of this year. The news was announced by Subway Russia LLC Vice President for Business Development Gennady Kochetkov at the 2nd ShopAndMall.Ru conference on retail franchising. ‘Fast food enterprises, especially the ones that are franchise-based, are the kind of business whose sales volumes tend to be only slightly affected by economic

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin met the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan to Russia Ulugbek Chinaliyev. The Governor said in his greeting address to the ambassador that he hoped the official’s visit to the Russian regions would be a successful one and would signify a new step in the development of Russia and Kyrgyzstan’s long-term, mutually beneficial cooperation. Now the Republic of Kyrgyzstan is Sverdlovsk Region’s 22nd most important foreign trade partner and its 7th most important among the CIS member states. Besides, the two

One of the victims of a recent explosion at Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK) has passed away. The unfortunate man was a thirty-nine-year-old foreman about 70% of whose body had been covered in burns. The fire-causing explosion occurred on the premises of Evraz Holding’s NTMK by-product coke division on November 2, 2010. The explosion at the coal preparation shop’s breaking plant block left five workers burned and injured; four of them were taken to Nizhniy Tagil Municipal Hospital 4. Police officers from Tagilstroyevskiy investigative department of Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region,

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled on October 26, 2010 that ZAO Avto Land is an insolvent debtor, thus closing case А60-22892/2010-С11. The automobile dealer will now have to undergo six-month bankruptcy proceedings, Kommersant states under the Insolvency Reports heading. Vladimir Sivoplyasov, a member of Ural Self-Regulatory Organization of Trustees in Bankruptcy, has been chosen as Avto Land’s trustee in bankruptcy.

‘The problem with the plane which operated Dubai-Yekaterinburg flight was caused by the poor condition of the landing strip,’ Ural Airlines’ press service reports. An A321 operating flight 739 Dubai-Yekaterinburg ran an extra thirty meters off the runway while trying to land at 4:25 AM on November 6, 2010. The runway was covered in ice, an ad hoc investigative committee confirmed. ‘The crew members were told during the landing that the strip was in great condition and it was possible to make a safe landing,’ the airline points out. 143 passengers and eight crew members were aboard the plane