UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 5, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s customers got more than RUR 25.2m back as insurance payments this year; this exceeds the figures for one year earlier by 100%. ‘These funds were used to handle the borrowers’ financial issues in case of insured events and let them keep making their loan repayments or redeem the entire amount,’ the bank’s press service reports. The main reason the insurance payments went up is that the borrowing parties grew more financially and legally literate and are now more proactive in applying for insurance money.

UrBC, Moscow, July 5, 2018. Nathalie Tours had to cancel all of the already booked and prepaid tours due to financial troubles, the tour operator’s Director-General Vladimir Vorobiev announced during a broadcast on Echo of Moscow. ‘There is this problem that the negative publicity has been affecting our ability to meet our contractual obligations, so our partners are all refusing their services to the company. We do not see any other way out but to have all our contracts annulled,’ he said. Vorobiev explained the publicity in question is ‘the information circulating on the market, including

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 5, 2018. The demand for hotel rooms rose by 28% in Yekaterinburg during the World Football Championship days compared with one year earlier, Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department refers to Hotel Advisors’ research findings as indicating. It is reported that the hotels were 73.7% full on average throughout the entire championship-hosting fortnight (no data are available for hostels or private apartments). The per-room revenue is estimated at RUR 4,050, which is RUR 2,061 more than one year earlier. According to Sverdlovsk Region Tourism Development Center,

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 4, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won the 15th Mining & Metallurgical Industry CSR Contest, the plant’s Information & PR Department reports. 61 mining and metallurgical enterprises competed in the contest; this is the second year in a row that MMK wins in Environmental Protection & Resource Saving. ‘MMK invested more than RUR 4bn in environmental projects last year. The company implemented several large-scale ones: the sintering plant’s sulphur-trapping units got reconstructed; the gas-filtering facility got upgraded at the electric

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2018. 132 students who have successfully completed ChelPipe Group’s Future of White-Coated Metallurgy Corporate Training Program received their vocational school-leaving certificates today; seven students graduated with honors, the company press service reports. The program’s most promising alumni are already employed with ChelPipe Group’s Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ). Vassily Kozyritsky and Andrei Mihailov won the 5th WorldSkills Russia’s local rounds in Mechatronics; Evgeny Aleksandrov and Maxim Melnikov won the 3d WorldSkills Hi Tech’s nationwide round;

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2018. Volunteers from the NGO Gorod Pervykh are now working to reconstruct one of Pervouralsk’s architectural landmarks, a rotunda located between Gagarin St, Chkalov St, Volodarsky St, and Trubnikov St, ChelPipe Group’s press service reports. First, forty volunteers removed all the grass that has grown on the structure and cleaned up the site. Together with employees of ChelPipe Group’s Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ), they will soon start putting the surrounding trees into shape and removing all dead shrubs. Once this has been finished, the rotunda itself will

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) looked into 227 websites of local hotels and carried out 284 unscheduled inspections to determine seventeen cases of hotels overcharging their guests during the World Football Championship 2018 days, the division’s press service reports. Now the Russian Government set an upper limit on accommodation prices for all the Russian cities hosting the World Cup games. Following the checks, three and six legal entities had to face administrative liability, with charges based on

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 4, 2018. The agreement on the construction of a medical cluster in Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy was signed on July 3, 2018, RSG-Akademicheskoye’s press service reports. The agreement was signed by all the key participants in the unique project, including RSG-Akademicheskoye’s Director-General Viktor Krivosheyin, Rector of Ural State Medical Academy Olga Kovtun, acting head of Maternity & Neonatology Research Institute Galina Malgina, and Executive Director of the non-profit Ural Biomedical Cluster Vladimir Vlasov. Additionally, heads of Sverdlovsk

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2018. EVRAZ Holding’s Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Works (NTMK) helps make the city ponds and water reservoirs cleaner by planting exotic flora there that eats both organic and nonorganic stuffs, the company press service reports. The plant’s environmental experts planted water hyacinth (Eichhornia) and water lettuce (Pistia stratiotes) into a pond connected to the Vyazovka River and some single-cell green algae (Chlorella) in Nizhniy Tagil Pond and Lenevskoye Reservoir. The planting campaign is a monthly event; Vyazovka River Pond gets some 650 root

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) cancelled the commission on its 120-day-grace-period credit card on July 2, 2018, the bank’s press service reports. You can apply for your free card through September 1, 2018; the offer holds for Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Kirov Region, and Bashkortostan. As for the other constituencies where the UBRD operates, the offer holds between June 18 and August 18, 2018; this applies to Perm Territory, Moscow, Voronezh Region, Saratov Region, Orenburg Region, Belgorod Region,

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 3, 2018. Equipment for the new steam turbine got delivered to Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Central Power Station; the new turbine is meant to replace its older counterpart and to ensure a boost in the station’s energy efficiency. The assembly and startup will begin in the very near future, the company press service reports. The turbine was made at Ural Turbine Plant and comes with the latest automated control system to ensure best-mode performance and energy savings. For one, the unit needs less heat to produce one kilowatt of electric power, which means

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2018. The average offers for long-term rentals in Yekaterinburg grew 30% more expensive between May and June (the figures went from RUR 18,500 up to RUR 24,100 per apartment on average), the online estate service N1.RU reports. Rental prices went up most noticeably in VIZ, Parkovy, and the centrally located bits, where the monthly rent rose by 30% on average. The rental market supply increased dramatically in VIZ, Avtovokzal, and the central locations. Also, the supply of the more expensive two-bedroom apartments rose by 7.5% all over the city. The number of

UrBC, Moscow, July 3, 2018. Russia’s Ministry of Emergencies extended its inspections of shopping malls through July 30, 2018, RIA Novosti reports. According to the ministry, every one in six malls in the country fails to comply with the regulations for the performance of automated fire alarms and firefighting systems. The ministry first started checking the shopping malls all over the country after a major fire outbreak in Zimnyaya Vishnya Mall in Kemerovo, when sixty-four people (forty-one of them children) got killed. By early May, the inspections resulted in nearly a third of all malls

UrBC, Moscow, July 2, 2018. Federal Grid Company’s shareholders decided on the amount of dividends for the year 2017 at the annual general meeting, TASS reports. Together with the dividends for the first quarter of 2017, FGC is going to direct RUR 20.31bn out of its net profit (RUR 42.36bn all in all) to dividend payments. The dividends thus amount to RUR 1.48 per share. In 2016, the dividends amounted to RUR 18.19bn (RUR 1.4 per share). This means the amount of dividends to be paid for the year 2017 is an all-time high for the business.

UrBC, Moscow, July 2, 2018. The Russian Government adopted a decree making it obligatory for all the Internet service providers and media transmitting services to store their users’ data for six months beginning from July 1, 2018. The decree is now available on the official legal information portal. The new legislature is part of the anti-terrorist package adopted on July 2018. According to the Cabinet’s decree, ISPs now must store their users’ personal data provided for various online services as well as voice messages, texts, images, and audio and video files for six months. Starting

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, July 2, 2018. ChelPipe Group’s SOT now makes a new type of product for the nuclear power industry: the plant made a set of induction bends (diameter: 219 mm; layer thickness: 11 mm) from stainless steel for the first time. The eighteen bends will be used for the construction of Belorusskaya Nuclear Power Station and have already been delivered to customer, the Group’s press service reports. ‘The fact that our customers in the nuclear industry trust us with important orders is the best proof of our product’s outstanding quality. We are grateful to our partners for the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 2, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) managed to save over RUR 255m as a result of innovative developments and improvement proposals in January-May 2018; this exceeds the figures for a year earlier by nearly 20%, MMK Information & PR Department reports. ‘Our expert boards processed 2,108 improvement proposals in the first five months of the year. 1,432 proposals got approved, which means 67.9% of all the submitted ideas proved a success (compared with 63.6% a year earlier). 423 innovative ideas got considered in May alone, and 292 got approved. 54% of

UrBC, Moscow, July 2, 2018. Russia placed a claim with the World Trade Organization regarding the U.S. steel and aluminum import tariffs, Prime refers to the Minister for Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin as stating. ‘It is believed that the United States violated quite a few of the WTO regulations when imposing extra tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. In addition to Russia, claims against the U.S. have also been placed by China, India, the EU, Canada, Mexico, and Norway,’ the minister said. The United States state that the 25% steel import tariffs and 10% aluminum ones got imposed in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 29, 2018. EVRAZ Holding’s West-Siberian Integrated Metallurgical Works (ZSMK) induced a fish protection device at its Beregovaya Pumping Station in Novokuznetsk. The unit is meant to prevent the younger fish from dying next to Zapadno-Sibirskaya Power Station on the Tom, the company press service reports. ‘The electronic fish protection system creates a high-voltage field that wards off the fish and thus prevents the smaller, younger specimens from getting trapped in the intake chamber. The unit’s efficiency meets all the environmental requirements and the Russian

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 29, 2018. Some 100,000 people have visited Yekaterinburg during the first two weeks of the world football championship games, Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department refers to the constituency’s Governor as stating. ‘We have footballers, supporters, reporters, and tourists from all over the world coming here: according to our preliminary estimates, these are around 100,000 people altogether. They have thus seen a city located on the Europe/Asia border and got to know this unique territory, known for its industrial, scientific, intellectual, cultural, and