Ural State University of Economics was unable to explain the fact that the college funds were used to buy an expensive Lexus car. According to the website dedicated to state purchases, the university recently completed a purchasing transaction involving a Japanese car that cost 3.75m RUR. It has been reported off the record that the automobile in question happens to be the Lexus that the university Rector Mikhail Fedorov uses. No comments,’ USUE press officer Olga Kulakova told UrBC. Meanwhile, Yekaterinburg dwellers were informed a little while earlier that the university violated the fire

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK), one of the world’s leading manufacturers of tubing products for the oil and gas industry, reports its premium thread connections TMK PF have been successfully certified for compliance with the ISO 13679 CAL IV requirements. The certification audit was carried out at Oil States Industries in Aberdeen, Great Britain, where the world’s largest O & G companies’ produce get certified, TMK press service reports. The testing was performed by TMK-Premium Service that has actually tested TMK’s produce for compliance with the ISO 13679 CAL IV standard for the first

1.79m passengers used the services of Ural Airlines in the year 2010, with the company’s aircraft performing a total of 16,650 flights, the airline’s press service reports. Ural Airlines is now one of Russia’s Top10 air carriers in terms of passenger turnover. The company’s fleet of vessels is mainly comprised of the modern and comfortable Airbus planes: the carrier currently uses seventeen such planes (twelve A320 ones and five A321 ones).

Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service’s Ural Federal District division ruled on June 14, 2011 (Order 62-11-681/pz-i) that the emission of Sverdlovsk Region-based Euroleasing’s ordinary registered uncertificated shares should be halted.

Standard & Poor’s affirmed the ratings of Russia’s major producer of dairy foods and fruit juices Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods (WBD) at BB+ (the long-term credit rating) and ruAA+ (the national scale rating) as well as the rating for the company’s bonds. We are now calling the ratings off at WBD’s request. At the time of the calling-off, the rating outlook stood at Positive, which means the rating could actually be promoted due the synergizing operational effect and the positive trends in the company’s financing after it has been transferred 100% to PepsiCo Inc (A/Stable/A-1),’ the rating agency

It has recently been detected that General Motors Daewoo Auto Technology CIS uses the Olympics logos on its Chevrolet cars illegitimately. Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service Committee and Sochi 2014 coordination committee found out that the said company engaged in unfair competition practices by using the Olympics logos illegally on its Chevrolet automobiles. The FAS committee ordered General Motors Daewoo Auto Technology CIS to stop violating the existing regulations. The word Olympic is actually a legally protected verbal element of the registered trademark belonging to the International

The telecommunications provider MegaFon and Nokia announced they are about to launch a joint special offer. Any customers who buys a Nokia phone in one MegaFon’s retail outlets or online store before July 24, 2011, will be offered a month’s worth of prepaid unlimited Internet use as a bonus, MegaFon’s press service reports. The offer applies to Nokia smartphones (Series 5228, 5230, 5250, С3-01, С5-03, С6-01, С7, N8, E7, and X3-02).

Linde Aktiengesellschaft has recently been fined for an administrative offense committed in the field of securities market regulations in Ural Federal District; the fine amounted to 50,000 RUR. The decision was made by Ural Federal District’s division of Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service.

Ural Morgan Carbon reports its net profit has plummeted dramatically, that is, by 1,186.3%. The company says the reason for the slump was a decrease in revenues and an increase in the prime cost because of the raw materials and the power resources growing more expensive.

HSBC Russian daughter enterprise HSBC Bank is selling a portion of its retail business to Citibank, Interfax reports. According to HSBC, the assets involved in the transaction were worth 305.8m RUR on March 31, 2011. The deal is expected to go through in the third quarter of 2011. HSBC decided to close its private banking and retail divisions in Russia and to focus on the business customer sector in April 2011. In fact, another large British Bank, Barclays, also made the decision to stop working on the retail services in Russia a little while earlier, Interfax observes.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) reports its has successfully undergone a technical audit carried out by Renault experts. Based on the results of the audit, MMK received an approval for the delivery of hot dip galvanized rolled metal stock meant for the manufacturing of automobile internal parts. The confirmation of the fact that MMK’s technologies comply with Renault’s modern standards is an important step on the way to acceptation that will later on allow us to make serial deliveries to both Russian and foreign customers,’ MMK reports. Now MMK has been successfully undergoing its

The annual general meeting of VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation’s stockholders took place in Berezniki, Perm Territory, recently. The year 2010 was a crucial one for the company; the troubles of 2009 were still felt, but we nevertheless managed to lay a foundation for further growth. For one, our key performance indicators came to look better. Even though our sales revenues went down by slightly less than 5% last year compared with the year 2009, our net profit still soared by 240%. This sounds impressive, even though there is still much to work on in terms of money in the year 2011,’ says the

A monument dedicated to the king of pop will be unveiled in Yekaterinburg on June 25, 2011; the initiative was put forth by Invincible (Michael Jackson’s Russian fan club) a year ago. For one, Yekaterinburg has already got a Michael Jackson wall next to the Beatles monument. Michael Jackson’s admirers gather there on regular basis, while the fan club rehearses the dances inspired by his video clips. In fact, several monuments dedicated to Michael Jackson have been introduced in Europe since 2009. Now all fans will have a new place to get together. This is going to be Russia’s first monument

Deputy Head of Yekaterinburg Municipal Council for City Planning, Transportation, and Environment Evgeniy Lipovitch held a meeting devoted to the strategic project on the modernization of the existing railway node in Yekaterinburg. The meeting participants used the decision made by Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma on June 10, 2003 (No. 40/6, On Yekaterinburg’s Strategic Plan) and the ruling by the city council as of February 9, 2011 (On the Development, Implementation, and Prolongation of Yekaterinburg Strategic Development Projects) as their starting points to consider the details of some of the

The annual general meeting of Ural Instrument-Making Plant’s stockholders has been put off by over one month, namely, from June 25, 2011 to July 29, 2011. The news was carried by Oblastnaya Gazeta. As is known, the company’s Board of Directors suggested that the annual report for 2010 should not be approved, that no dividend should be declared, and no premiums paid to the BOD members. It is also recommended that the stockholders terminate the powers of the enterprise’s current Director-General Georgy Vassilyev before the actual end of his term.

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin chaired a meeting of Ural Federal University Supervisory Board. The meeting was dedicated to the main directions of the university’s development in 2011-2012 and its educational, international, and financial activity. Rector of Ural Federal University Viktor Koksharov pointed out that getting as many students as possible was not the priority; the quality of teaching was. He explained there were some problems there: only 61% of faculty, in fact, have their PhDs, whereas the share of younger lecturers was rather meager. This is why the

SKB-Bank was awarded a special prize by one of its correspondent banks VTB Bank (Deutschland) AG in the Best Money Order Processing category. SKB-Bank has been handling money orders using an international SWIFT system since 1993. Certain fill-in formats are used for processing the payments, so if the formats are complied with, the orders are processed by a correspondent bank automatically, without an operator’s help. Automation of payment processing naturally makes the entire procedure much speedier, so as a result, the money orders get to their addressees much faster. At the moment, 98.15%

The officers of the Internal Affairs Department and Yekaterinburg Customs disclosed an illegal workshop that dealt in the production of fake branded goods on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg, the press service of Ural Customs Administration reports. Yekaterinburg Customs Intellectual Property Rights Protection Department officials and the officers of Yekaterinburg Consumer Market Offenses Department inspected a number of premises (owned by unidentified individuals) upon the request of the trademark owners Adidas AG and Adidas International Marketing B.V. Vlasta Consulting, Moscow. Some

Sverdlovsk Region and Rosatom are about to sign an agreement on socioeconomic cooperation; the issue was discussed at Governor Alexander Misharin’s recent meeting with the state-run corporation representatives. The draft agreement covers a number of important projects where the regional authorities and the corporation’s management could be partners. For one, the agreement would provide for the introduction of a hi tech cluster on the premises of Electrokhimpribor. This enterprise, which was set up in 1947 and now employs most of the people in the locality, deals in special civil and defense

Once the summer is here, small and medium enterprise owners can enjoy the opportunity of managing their available cash more efficiently, as the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development raised all of its ruble deposit rates on June 8, 2011. The increase amounted to 0.1% to 1% a year on top of the existing rates, depending on the deposit period, the amount of money deposited, and the deposit type.