Yekaterinburg office estate market is expected to feel some space shortage in one year’s time, Chairman of Yekaterinburg Council Consumer Services Committee Oleg Kitayev says. ‘The number of available premises is going down in Yekaterinburg and comes to about 10% at the moment. I think that the market will become 100% saturated over the next year. As a result, some shortage might be felt, as very few new buildings are expected to be commissioned. For one, only one Class A object will be built: this is the President at 1a Boris Yeltsin St,’ he notes. ‘There are about 15% to 20% of available

Yekaterinburg Leninsky District Court looked into the prosecution’s evidence and returned the verdict of guilty upon a 35-year-old Ilya Komarov, who had been accused of committing 123 crimes stated in Article 159 (part 4) of Russia’s Criminal Code (organized large-scale fraud), Sverdlovsk Region prosecution authorities report. The court determined that between February 2006 and August 2007, Komarov set up a group in Pervouralsk and Yekaterinburg that dealt in stealing other people’s assets through swindles. The assets in question were money owned by VUZ Bank. Komarov was the leader of the

The German chain store Media Markt keeps expanding onto Yekaterinburg white goods market. Another home appliances hypermarket will be set up in the city in late August: it will be located in Park House Shopping Mall, replacing Technosila. The hypermarket will start operating on the eve of August 30. The area comes to over 4,300 sq m, including about 3,000 sq m of shopping space, ShopAndMall.Ru reports. The first Media Markt store in Yekaterinburg was launched at Alatyr Shopping Mall at 5 Malyshev St in December 2009.

The majority of middle-class Russians now reside in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Rostov Region, Sverdlovsk Region, and Nizhniy Novgorod Region, Rosgosstrakh’s Strategic Research Center reports after an analysis of the Russian citizens’ spending activity in various federal constituencies. According to Rosgosstrakh, Rostov, Sverdlovsk, and Nizhniy Novgorod Regions show the greatest potential for new car sales among all the large Russian provinces. Also, Rostov and Sverdlovsk Regions and Krasnodar Territory show some growing potential for white goods sales, and nearly in all parts of Russia, the

The court fined Uralelectromed for failing to comply with Sverdlovsk Region of Rospotrebnadzor’s order to eliminate the sanitary rules violations, the agency reports. In June 2012, Sverdlovsk Region of Rospotrebnadzor (the state-run consumer rights agency) carried out an unscheduled on-site inspection of Uralelectromed, namely: Selen Holiday Hotel, Capital Construction Administration, a camping site at Lake Isetskoye, UMMC Sports Palace, Project Work Administration, the subsidiary of Safyanovskaya Med, the non-ferrous alloys production facility, the subsidiary of Polymetals Production, the

The public prosecution authorities in Ural Federal District are going to investigate the layoffs at Russian Magnesium, the authorities’ press service reports. ‘The public prosecution authorities in Ural Federal District’s Administration arranged for the media reports on the possible labor code violations at Russian Magnesium to be investigated,’ the message states. The request to this effect was sent to Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities. ‘Some media report the new management has asked the workers to quit. The circumstances of this case and its legitimacy will be looked into,

Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Denis Pasler is going to create a black list of companies that fail to pay all the taxes to the region’s budget. These non-payers will not be offered any government orders, Pasler said in the course of a government session today. ‘The tax authorities are going to help. All the companies already involved in the government contracts need to be checked before September 1. If some of them are not paying taxes, they will be blacklisted and won’t be allowed to take part in auctions any longer. If a company uses budget funds, it must assume some budget

Another fuel filling station might be set up at Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg. The construction of the station is now being lobbied by Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Denis Pasler, who held a meeting with a delegation from Rosneft today. In the course of the meeting, the parties looked at the format of the prospective agreement between the oil company and Sverdlovsk Region. The agreement currently covers two directions, one of them has to do with putting up 25 filling stations and an oil station as well as a jet fuel filling station at Koltsovo Airport. The airport currently uses a

Every year, Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry issues over 11,000 administrative reports on violations of fire safety regulations, Chief Fire Surveillance Inspector of Sverdlovsk Region Roman Rudometov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘While public places now meet the fire safety regulations to a much greater extent, industrial enterprises leave much to be desired: they only comply with about 70% of all the requirements. Many of the bossed only deal with fire safety after a fire inspector comes to check them,’ Rudometov explained. He added that about

Sverdlovsk Region Government, the Union of Industrialists & Employers, and Sverdlovsk Region Trade Union Federation as well as the analytical center Expert-Ural came up with the results of the regional-scale competition in the field of industry and innovations called Achievement 2012. Ural Locomotives (Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Sverdlovsk Region), Sinara Group and Siemens AG’s joint venture, won in the Platform. Modernization Leader category. The awarding ceremony took place at a conference dedicated to how to fit in the new technological wave; the conference was part of the industry and

SK-Plast, Concern Uralelectroremont, and Rubin Sredneuralsky Winery still have no access to electricity, Oblkommunenergo’s PR Department reports. The thunderstorm that broke out last weekend collapsed the power generating facilities in Alapayevsk, Turinsk, Verkhniy Tagil, and Polevskoy. At 8:00 PM on July 15, 23 substations stopped working because of a storm, leaving over 1,500 families, 45 legal entities, and seven public infrastructure buildings (a culture club, a hotel, some water-supplying facilities, a winery, the public baths, and a stadium) without electric power supply. Three

Some falsework plates caught fire at the construction site of Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Plant’s power-generating unit 4, but the fire was put out soon, Rosatom reports. The fire broke out on July 16 at 8:30 AM local time in the building of the unit’s main casing. This was caused by a short circuit failure in the electric cable used for supplying electricity onto the site. The fire was extinguished by the firefighting team of Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Plant’s security personnel. No one was hurt. The construction site of power-generating unit 4 is located within two kilometers to the north of

Ural Airlines keeps on flying increasingly more passengers and freight. Since the start of the year, nearly 1.5m people have flown with this airline, the company’s press service reports. Ural Airlines came up with a production performance report for June 2012. 362,881 passengers used the company’s services last month, which is 30% more than in June 2011. All in all, 1,499,996 people have flown with the air carrier since the beginning of the year. In June 2012, Ural Airlines operated 2,579 flights (23 more than a year earlier), including 1,261 international flights, 830 domestic flights, and

By 2017, the total capacity of Sverdlovsk Region power system could actually reach 4,500 megawatts, the Program for the Development of Sverdlovsk Region’s Energy Complex in 2012-2017 states. This program was presented to the public in the course of a plenary session of the professional energy complex community at the exhibition Innoprom 2012. It was pointed out that the current consolidated capacity of Sverdlovsk Region-based power stations comes to 9,670 megawatts. 97% of energy is produced using imported fuel. In 2001, 46.2bn kilowatt-hours were used and 52bn kilowatt-hours were produced,

The rating agency Moody’s demoted the rating of Bank Uralsib by one level, down to B1. The agency is concerned over the bank’s large-scale investments in housing and commercial estate. The bank said the agency’s actions were quite strict, but promised to sell up to 50% of its real estate within six to nine months, RBC daily reports. Last Friday, when Moody’s looked into Uralsib’s IAS documentation for 2011, the bank’s long-term national and foreign currency deposit ratings were demoted from Ba3 to B1, with Stable rating outlook. Moody’s reports the bank incurred $130.5m worth of net loss

An independent oil company RusPetro Plc applied to Rosnedra, asking to for its license entitling the company to the use of Palyanovsky deposit in Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region for fifty more years, the company reports. The enterprise expects to get the new license in December 2012. RusPetro also explained that it started using the railway for oil transportation in the second quarter of 2012, even though the bulk of its produce is still delivered via Transneft. RusPetro’s railway transportation premium comes to $3.3 per barrel against pipeline delivery, Kommersant Ural reports. The

A subsidiary of Strategic Initiatives Agency was officially opened in Yekaterinburg: this news was announced at the innovations and industry exhibition Innoprom 2012. ‘This is a crucial event for our region and other parts of the country: all the regions will be watching us move along this way. The launch of a permanent representation is an important and a necessary step for us. We expect Vladimir Putin’s imitative on setting up this agency will keep on unfolding,’ said Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeny Kuivashev. ‘The agency managed to achieve something over one year. Dmitri Medvedev

On the first day of the International Forum/Exhibition Innoprom 2012, Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation and Bombardier signed a number of agreements providing for the setup of a production facility for underground carriages and trams in Russia. The agreement package was signed by Uralvagonzavod Director-General Oleg Sienko, Bombardier Transportation President and Chief Operating Officer André Navarri, and Head of Russian Government Dmitri Medvedev. The agreements are quite unique, as they provide not only for the transfer of modern production technologies to Russia and

Ural Airlines is now offering tickets for its Cologne-Moscow-Cologne flights to be operated through October 25, 2013. Flights will be operated three times a week (on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays). The timetable is arranged so as to make it very convenient for the passengers traveling from various parts of Russia. Ural Airlines operates daily flights to Moscow from Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk, Irkutsk, Krasnodar, and other cities, so the waiting time for the connecting flight at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport will not exceed four hours, the company’s press officer

Russian Magnesium (with plans to build a magnesium plant near Asbest, Sverdlovsk Region) is now on the verge of bankruptcy, Sverdlovsk Region Vice Premier Alexander Petrov said off the record in the course of exhibition and forum Innoprom 2012, Kommersant refers to Interfax-Ural as reporting. ‘The threat of bankruptcy does exist, and it’s quite real,’ Petrov said. It was reported earlier that Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court decided in June that Uralgipromez’s claim regarding Russian Magnesium’s 51.8m RUR debt should be sustained. The magnesium plant under construction owed the plaintiff