February 24, 2015. Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled that MTS Bank’s advertising was unfit for the purpose, the service’s press service reports. The advertisement for the bank’s Hot Deposit offer was distributed in Moscow Underground in the form of 20x40cm and 30x40cm stickers in September and October 2014 and on billboards in several Russian cities, including Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. The large print read, ‘Hot Deposit, interest up 12% p.a.’ The other terms of the deposit offer (the ones affecting the final income a customer would make) were given in small, white print against

February 24, 2015. Yekaterinburg came fifth on the list of Russian cities most popular with tourists, the city council refers to TripAdvisor’s data as stating. ‘Ten cities were featured in the rating based on the website users’ ratings of landmarks, hotels, and cafes and restaurants. Moscow and Saint Petersburg are predictably at the top; Yekaterinburg was ahead of Yaroslavl, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Krasnodar, and Suzdal. The rating’s authors said Yekaterinburg, with its plethora of theatres, museums, libraries, and quite a few monuments (including some very unconventional ones) was a place for

February 20, 2015. Carl’s Jr., a premium fast food chain, reopened at Yekaterinburg’s Greenwich Mall. According to the representatives of 73 Malyshev St Society, the restaurant will be operating in exactly the same spot as before and will retain all of its quality and excellent customer service. The place was closed down in January when Yarkaya Zvezda, the franchise holder, announced several of its outlets would have to go into liquidation, including the one in Yekaterinburg. This had to with the country’s economic instability. The franchise was then purchased by another company which had the

February 20, 2015. Yekaterinburg rental market hasn’t had any shortage of supply for a while now, Guram Tukhashvili of Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s Analytic Center told UrBC. ‘According to the Chamber’s database, the rental prices have been going down lately. As early as two years ago, the median monthly rent came to 33,000 RUR and now it only stands at about 22,000 RUR. Quite a few new apartment buildings are put up in Yekaterinburg every year, so the supply is increasingly on the rise,’ Tukhashvili says. He believes the demand is gradually going down since some families who used to have to

February 20, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation is going to present its promising special vehicles at the International Defence Exhibition in Abu Dhabi this year, the corporation’s press service reports. The corporation’s two-floor, 185-m2 stand will be complemented by an upgraded T90C tank. The vehicle will be presented with a number of new options that are based on the latest trends in the armored vehicle industry and that make the tank fit for the area’s climatic conditions. ‘The display will be a static show with a set of presentations; this means the customers will be able to get

February 20, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to consider Severnaya Agricultural Firm’s insolvency application submitted by Elektrotechnologii. The application was placed with the court on February 16. The defendant was founded on November 14, 2007 and is now managed by Oleg Khan. The company is now involved in a number of lawsuits as a defendant, with the total amount of claims reaching 1.3bn RUR. The debts are to be paid by Severnaya itself, Uralbroiler Yekateirnburg, and other businesses owned by Oleg and Olessya Khan. Sberbank of Russia seized all of the agricultural

February 20, 2015. ChTPZ Group and seven Kazakhstan-based industrial schools signed cooperation agreements under the auspices of ROST-ORLEU Association, the Group’s press service reports. The ceremony took place at Karaganda Polytechnic School; the papers were signed by the Association’s current members and heads of seven more educational establishments: North Kazakhstan Vocational Teachers’ Training College, Petropavlovsk Railway Transport School, Atyrau Polytechnic School, Kazakhmys Polytechnic School, Shaktinsk Technological School, Bolashak/Karaganda Up-to-Date Education School, and

February 19, 2015. Nizhniy Tagil’s Sputnik, a hockey club sponsored by Uralvagonzavod Corporation, is now eligible to enter the Supreme Hockey League’s play off. ‘This was possible due to beating the league’s front-runner, Saryarkoy from Kazakhstan. Sputnik was 24th out of 26 teams last year, but this time its overall ranking is one of the best,’ the corporation’s press service says. Chairman of Sputnik’s board of trustees Alexei Zharich congratulated the team and their manager on the season’s victory and said he hoped they would fight hard in the play off. ‘Following the last season’s

February 19, 2015. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development added a new option to its range of e-banking services: customers can now view the schedule of interest payment or capitalization for their remotely controlled savings deposits (namely, Profitable, Advantageous, Manageable, and Paycheck), the bank’s press service reports. The schedule provides dates on which the interest is paid, the interest rate for the given deposit period, and the amount of interest paid. This new option means the bank’s customers can check how much profit they’ve made and when the next payment is due at

February 19, 2015. The turnover of goods at Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport’s customs points declined by 20% this year compared with the beginning of 2014, the Customs’ head Sergey Abrosimov announced at a press conference. He added the international passenger traffic shrank even more drastically, by as much as 35%. ‘Nevertheless, we expect the passenger traffic figures to recover by the middle of the year, primarily thanks to travelers going on their vacations, as migrant workers have remained a considerable part of the overall international passenger statistics,’ he pointed out. As for

February 19, 2015. 13% of Yekaterinburg businesses are planning to offer their employees a pay raise this year, HeadHunter’s research team states. Under 5% of companies intend to reduce their workers’ pay, and 45% expect their staff salaries to remain unchanged. However, even those employers that do plan on pay raises are only prepared for this raise to be under 10%. Quite a few companies (36%) say they haven’t made up their minds yet and will have to play it by ear. Interestingly, middle-level managers are the ones at risk as far as a pay decrease is concerned: if a business does go through

February 19, 2015. The arrears of wages went up by 22.8%, or by 457m RUR in January 2015, Rossiyskaya Gazeta refers to Rosstat as stating. As of February 1, 2015, Russian employers owed salaries and wages to 71,000 workers. For one, the arrears rose by 14 times due to the fact that money was not delivered from the government budget funds in time. The overall amount of wage arrears came to less than 1% of the consolidated one month’s pay of a working citizen. 44% of this money is owed by employers in the processing sector, 15% by those in the construction industry, 11% by those in the

February 18, 2015. Sinara Group is going to build a new highway in Volgograd Region to connect Moskovskaya St in Krasnoslobodsk to Vtoraya Pyatiletka in Sredneakhtubinsk. The highway will reduce the time it takes to get from the bridge across the Volga to Bukatin Lug (a new district of Krasnoslobodsk that Sinara Development is putting up there), Sinara Group’s PR Center reports. The highway construction project is part of the government program on the development of Volgograd Region’s transport infrastructure in 2014-2016. The project documentation was prepared by Sinara Development within

February 18, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s experts met with the representatives of Rift Valley Railways, a company that maintains the railways in Kenya and Rwanda. According to the corporation’s press service, the African company’s delegates paid a visit to the company’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil in order to talk over their cooperation prospects. Uralvagonzavod might, for example, compete for the contract for 480 meter-gauge railway platforms. The delegates also took an inertest in Uralcryomash’s tank containers. ‘The terms of delivery we offer, as well as our prices and approach to

February 18, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region-based businesses’ revenues rose by 13.6% in January 2015 compared with a year earlier, Sverdlovskstat reports. For one, the processing sector’s revenues went up by 30.4%, the agricultural, hunting, and timber industries’ revenues went up by 28.5%, and the construction sector’s revenues increased by 8.4%. At the same time, the revenues in the production and distribution of electric power, natural gas, and water and in the education sector declined by 5.4% and 2.5%, respectively.

February 18, 2015. Russian air carriers’ overall passenger traffic might drop by 7.6% in 2015, Russia’s Economic Development Ministry’s updated forecast states. Domestic air travel could shrink due to the weakening ruble and the decrease in the population’s actual income as well as growing airplane leasing expenses. As for last year, air traffic actually rose by 10.2% compared with 2013. The ministry also says that Russians’ falling incomes will result in smaller trade turnover (-5.9% for food items and -10.2% for non-food items). The average household’s private consumption will also go down

February 18, 2015. 305,800 m2 worth of new housing got commissioned in Sverdlovsk Region in January 2015; this was 5.9 times more than in January 2014. According to Sverdlovskstat, the figure includes 143,800 m2 worth of private housing construction, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier by 2.8 times.

February 17, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant looked at the performance results of its voluntary neighborhood watch team that was set up one year ago, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘1,253 workers from nearly all of the head plant’s divisions joined the watch over the course of the year. Their shifts amounted to 2,100 hours altogether, with an average of twenty people per shift. The voluntary police assistants are foremen, engineers, personnel managers, heads of departments, offices, and divisions, economists, technicians, press operators, janitors, adjusters, millers,

February 17, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled that OAO Pnevmostroymachine should undergo bankruptcy proceedings. On December 5, 2014, a claim was placed with the court by Raifffeisenbank; the plaintiff insisted that Pnevmostroymachine be declared insolvent due to its 29m-ruble debt; the claim was called off after a peace settlement. However, on December 12 the defendant itself submitted an insolvency application. According to the files relating to the case, the company admitted owing 2,357,312,913 RUR to its creditors as of November 1, 2014. The company’s current assets amount

February 17, 2015. The deteriorating economic circumstances have resulted in considerably more office space available for rent in Yekaterinburg. The share of Class A offices to let rose to 23% in the last quarter of 2014, that of Class B+ offices went up from 2% to 11%. The share of vacant Class C offices kept shrinking between December 2013 and September 2014 but increased to 14% in the fourth quarter of the year, Ural Chamber of Real Estate reports. Around 15% of good quality offices are available for rent in Yekaterinburg at the moment and are advertised on the estate market. Experts