UrBC, Moscow, March 23, 2011. Bank VTB 24 was faced with a major IT glitch yesterday. The trouble began in the morning and affected all of the bank’s Moscow offices during the day, as well as its ATMs and e-banking services, Kommersant writes. The news of the IT problems was reported by one of VTB 24 customers, who was unable to take money out of his deposit account in the bank’s outlet in Sokolnicheskaya St. He was told that the system got stuck ‘in all Moscow outlets.’ Later on, the news was confirmed by the bank’s website. ‘We are currently updating our IT system, so the incorporation of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 23, 2011. Thai authorities have expressed an interest in organizing a direct scheduled flight from Bangkok to Yekaterinburg and have already made proposals to this extent to a number of local airlines, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin was informed by Thailand’s Ambassador in Russia Chalermpon Tanchitt. ‘We drew up the proposal regarding this direct flight a few months ago and we sent it to three air carriers, namely,Thai Airways, Bangkok Airlines и AirAsia,’ the Ambassador said. The official explained Thai Airways said they couldn’t provide an

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 23, 2011. Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service annulled the brokerage licenses of OOO KB Uniastrum Bank, with HQ in Moscow, and OOO Barclays Capital (also Moscow-based). The licenses entitled the companies to deal in futures and options transactions, the service reports. The decisions were taken by the service after the two banks had placed corresponding requests and produced proof of having met all their contractual obligations.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 23, 2011. Sverdlovsk Region is not one of the places where Hilton Worldwide is planning to introduce its hotels any time soon. The hotel chain signed a few management agreements with five hotels that are currently being put up in Russia and whose total number of rooms comes to 870. Two hotels, both branded Hampton by Hilton, will soon open in Omsk and in the west of Moscow, with tree more hotels opening in Moscow, Astrakhan, and Krasnodar; these three will be called Hilton Garden Inn, Kommersant reports. Hilton Worldwide says they currently run three hotels in

The launch of the international military intervention in Libya has already resulted in an immediate market response. ‘Provided certain factors are at play, such as the growing euro rate, exporters’ sales, growing tax payments and rising raw stuffs prices, the dollar might decline to 28 RUR. However, this process isn’t as simple as it looks. The fall of the dollar rate has to do with the fact that the market might also pay attention to the developments that actually support the dollar, such as the possible fall in the oil prices once the military action in Lybia stops, China going for stricter

Russia has been guaranteed by the Egyptian authorities that the country’s tourists would be safe and sound there, so it is expected that the possibility for the Russian tourists arriving at the Egyptian resorts will reopen soon, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Monday, RIAN Tourism reports. ‘We take it that things are getting back to normal in Egypt. Our embassy representatives went to Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh a little while ago and came back quite reassured,’ Lavrov said in the course of negotiations with his Egyptian counterpart Nabil al-Arabi. The minister

Ural Airlines is launching its new Yekaterinburg-Carlsbad flight today. ‘Increasingly more passengers are booking flights to the Czech Republic, so, in addition to the already existing daily flights from Yekaterinburg to Prague we are introducing a scheduled one to Carlsbad,’ the airline reports. The flight will be operated every Tuesday on an A320 plane. The in-flight time comes to 4,5 hours. The cheapest tickets are available for ?299 plus fees.

According to the data available as of March 1, 2011, 9,020 companies were officially placed on the All-Russian Travel Agents Register, with 1,520 agents registering themselves after July 15, 2010. The greatest increase in the number of agents was noticed in Moscow and Moscow Region, where the number of companies went up by 327 travel agents and reached 2,100 companies. In Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Region, the number of travel agents rose by 111 and now comes to 509 companies. In Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region, the number of travel agents increased by 78 agents and amounted to 338

OAO Ural Airlines came up with a performance report for January and February 2011. The company operated 2,695 flights in the two months of the year, which was 42% more than in the two months of 2010. For one, the airline operated 594 international flights (which exceeded the figures for 2010 by 41%), 1538 domestic flights (which exceeded the figures for 2010 by 37%), and 538 flights within the CIS (which exceeded the figures for 2010 by 59%). In February 2010, Ural Airlines operated 1,159 flights altogether, which was 37% better than in February 2010. These results were made possible due to

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won in the All-Russian contest Russia’s Best Enterprises. Dynamics, Efficiency, Responsibility 2010 in the Environmentally Responsible Enterprise category. The contest was coordinated by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. ‘MMK is involved in a large-scale investment program and is currently switching to new technological processes that provide for nature-friendly, conservationist facilities based on the most advanced technologies available at the moment. At the same time, we are doing away with the obsolete equipment as well,’ says

Chairman of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Board of Directors Viktor Rashnikov met the reporters from the world’s leading media such as Reuters», «Nikkei», «Steel Business Briefing», «Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung», «Steel Times International», «Platts», and some other press organs today. According to MMK PR Deparment, the commentators grew interested in Russia’s leading metallurgical company because of its large-scale upgrades program that brought the enterprise to a new technological height. MMK now manufactures more high value-added produce than any other Russian metallurgical

Forbes magazine’s experts came up with a rating of Russian banks’ dependability. ‘When choosing a bank, people still care most about its reliability. To make it easier for you to choose a bank, we broke the country’s top one hundred organizations into reliability groups depending on the evaluations provided by Fitch, Moody's, and S&P,’ the analysts explain. Forbes thus announced that OAO SKB-Bank is the most dependable bank in the Urals; it’s also Russia’s 44th largest and the Urals’ largest bank in terms of asset volume. Its assets, in fact, reach over 84.1bn RUR; SKB-Bank has also

OAO Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant sold 1,485,000 tons of steel pipes in 2010 against only 1,131,000 pipes a year earlier. The company’s output went up mainly due to the launch of the new Vysota 239 department that services the needs of Gazprom; the department started manufacturing goods in the second half of 2010 and produced 5,000 tons and 61,000 tons of goods in the third and fourth quarters of 2010, respectively. The plant kept on making pipes for Russia’s key pipelines, including VSTO-2, BTS-2, and Purpe-Samotlor. The company sold 202,000 tons of large-diameter pipes to customers in the

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service started looking into the causes of railway carriages becoming twice as expensive last year compared with the earlier price. This means a number of carriage manufacturers will be inspected to see if they actually take unfair advantage of their dominant market position. The inspections might involve Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation, Kommersant reports. The intention to investigate the drastic price increase in 2010 and 2011 was first voiced by Deputy Transport Minister Andrei Nedosekov. He said the government had asked the Transport

OAO NOMOS-Bank’s Board of Directors suggested that the company’s stockholders vote for passing the dividends on preferred registered stock as well as the dividends on common registered stock for the year 2010 at the upcoming AGM. The annual general meeting has been scheduled for April 18, 2011. The other points on the agenda cover issues related to the annual report approval and profit distribution as well as appointing the supervisory board and the audit commission members.

Urals Energy Sector Engineering Center (comprising UralVNIPIenergoprom, Uralselenergoproyekt, UralTEP, UralORGRES, UralVTI, Uralenergosetproyekt, and Chelyabenergosetproyekt) became a stockholder of ITsEU KZ, a limited liability company. The Center bought a 100% shareholding in the business.

World-class mathematicians and computer programmers will be the product of Ural Federal University’s department of Mathematics & Mechanics that is soon to be converted into Math & Computer Science Institute. The project on converting the department has already been approved at the university’s Development Program Directorate. In addition to the department of Mathematics & Mechanics, the new institute will also comprise a number of research laboratories and scientific education centers as well as the regional scientific learning center for information security and a specialized

Baltika, the beer brewing company and a member of Carlsberg Group, made some changes in the terms of its promotional offer that provided for a trip to Japan for the first prize winner. The decision to change the terms was made because of the tragic events in Japan happening at the moment, the company’s press service reports. ‘According to our earlier plans, a special campaign dubbed Baltika No. 7 – Now in Japan; Win a Trip to Tokyo was to have started on April 1, 2011. The idea for the campaign was elaborated in the fall of 2010, the special promotional beer packaging production began in

All the work related to the elaboration of the Titanium Valley Project and to the completion of a development plan for this special economic zone will probably be finished in May 2011, Deputy Economics Minister of Sverdlovsk Region Viktor Dolzhenko announced at a recent meeting dedicated to the project. The original decree to set up a special economic zone in Verkhyaya Salda, Sverdlovsk Region was enacted by the Russian Government in December 2010. The project’s budget (totaling to over 50bn RUR) has by now been agreed upon; the lion’s share of the money – 40bn RUR – is to be provided by the

Raghav Jugendra Singh bought a 6.1% shareholding in OAO Uralredmet, the company reports, whereas OOO Claris & Co that used to own an equal share is no longer the company’s stockholder. The company last underwent a change of stockholders in November 2010 when LAOAG Technical & Metallurgical Services Limited acquired a 15.78% shareholding in the business. The company reported then that the holding was bought from Raghav Jugendra Singh, who, in his turn, bought it from Gobest International Limited at the end of October 2010. OAO Uralredmet makes vanadium alloys and vanadium bullions for