UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 7, 2016. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) is launching a special offer for its i.ubrr.ru users, the bank’s press service reports. The bank’s e-customers can now win their own copy of Apple Watch when paying their mobile phone, TV, Internet connection, and housing bills or road fines, transferring money into other banks’ card accounts, or transferring money in between their own different currency accounts between March 28 and April 30, 2016. The prize goes to the person who makes the 50th, 100,000th, or 150,000th transaction within the given

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 7, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation started getting ready for Tankprom 3, an all-Russian research to practice conference to be held in Nizhniy Tagil in early October, the company press service reports. The event is also coordinated by the Moscow-based Association for Promotion of Science & Technology Museums Amnit, Moscow-based S.I. Vavilov Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology, Moscow’s Polytechnic Museum, and the Saint Petersburg-based Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps. Representatives of the country’s

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 6, 2016. Things are looking increasingly glum on Sverdlovsk Region’s labor market. According to the constituency’s Cabinet website, the official unemployment rate stood at 1.68% in early April, compared with 1.5% at the start of the year. According to Director of Sverdlovsk Region Labor & Employment Department Dmitri Antonov, the overall number of people registered as unemployed rose by 11.9% since New Year, that is, from 34,127 to 38,191 people. Sverdlovskstat reports the unemployment rate was 6.5% last year, while the number of those out of jobs came to over

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 6, 2016. Ural Airlines won the national Russian Wings 2015 Award, the air carrier’s press service reports. The company was awarded as the air carrier with the Best Engineering/Tech Support Service and was among the nominees for the Best E-Commerce and Group I Domestic Air Travel (for airlines which fly over 3m passengers a year). ‘The prize jury pointed to the airline’s success with the launch of its own tech center; this meant Ural Airlines could cut their maintenance costs considerably and implement new technological solutions in their repair practices. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 6, 2016. ChTPZ Group is going to introduce the exponents at and visitors to the Tube & Wire Exhibition in Dusseldorf, Germany, to its ‘White Metallurgy’ facilities, the company press service reports. This year, the company is making a presentation on its Vysota 239 LDP-manufacturing plant and ETERNO stamp-welded pipe connectors manufacturing plant, whose production sites have been recreated at the Group’s exhibition stand. ‘The design and the contents of the stand can make a visitor feel they’ve been transferred to our actual production sites. You can take a

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 6, 2016. This year, Electromachine (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) is planning to get additional certificates authorizing the company to do calibration testing of its geometrical, radio, thermo-technical, and vacuum measuring instruments, the company press service reports. This will mean the plant can fully meet its own instrument-testing needs without any outside help and thus save around 1.8m RUR annually. ‘The products our plant makes are all involved in the government-controlled regulation of measurements and their precision, so all the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 6, 2016. Director-General of Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) Igor Lobov received a special thank-you letter from Russian Geographical Society’s Omsk division for his support of the Heroes Live While They Are Remembered Project, the company press service reports. ‘The project, coordinated by the Society’s Omsk division and the web portal Zhiviye and funded by Gazprom Neft, was completed at the end of March. Igor Lobov was one of the city’s very first business managers to respond to the coordinator’s call for help in keeping the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, April 5, 2016. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has organized a Welcome Day for its suppliers for the fourteenth time this month. Within one year these monthly meetings were introduced, seventy-nine different companies have taken part already. Fourteen companies’ representatives attended the last meeting. ‘The unfailingly high number of participants is one proof that these meetings provide more transparency for our purchasing processes on the one hand and allow MMK to obtain more information about its new suppliers and the new products on their

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, April 5, 2016. The representatives of the Swedish company GlobeCert AB carried out a certification audit of MMK METIZ pre-stressing strands, which means the company can now supply this product to Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Estonia, and Latvian markets. MMK METIZ got certified for compliance of its 9.3mm, 12.5mm, 15.2mm, and 15.7mm pre-stressing strands with Parts 1 and 3 of Sweden’s prEN 10138: 2006 standard. ‘The Swedish company representatives confirmed that MMK METIZ ensures efficient control over the technological processes of

UrBC, Moscow, April 5, 2016. 4,374 new cars were sold in Sverdlovsk Region in the first two months of the year, down 7.5% on a year earlier, Avtostat reports. All in all, Sverdlovsk Region was the country’s ninth largest car market among all the federal constituencies, with 2.5% of all the sales on the Russian market made there. One year ago, the sales figure stood at 4,731 new automobiles, which was 58.1% less than in the year 2014 (17,900 units). The country’s overall car market sagged by 48.5% at the time (compared with 339,700 units sold in the year 2014).

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 5, 2016. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) is offering an all-expenses-covered trip to the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games this summer as a prize to one of its customers, the bank’s press service reports. ‘If you use your UBRD Visa card to pay for your purchases between April 1 and June 9, 2016, you have a chance to witness the 2016 Olympics opening ceremony first-hand,’ the press service says. To take part in the prize-drawing, you need to register at rio.visa.ru, use your bank card for at least five payment transactions (amounting to at least

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 5, 2016. Rus-Rating affirmed SKB-Bank’s credit ratings at BBB- and its country rating at AA, the bank’s press service reports. This is actually the best score a Ural Federal District-based bank has got so far. ‘The score is based on the following factors: good net interest margin, a recognizable local market brand, and moderate sensitivity to risks,’ the bank says. According to Rus-Rating, SKB-Bank is a large-sized bank and one of the Urals’ leading financial institutions. The bank specializes in loans and services to private customers and small and medium-sized

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 5, 2016. The telecommunications provider MegaFon identified its top Internet traffic user among Yekaterinburg business centers, the company press service reports. This was Stroganov in Karl Liebknecht St. ’The data transfer speed and quality allow for increasingly extensive use of Internet connection at work. We looked into all the data from our terminals covering over fifty business centers in Yekaterinburg and found a record-setter. It turns out high-speed Internet connection is used by people working at Stroganov the most, together they have downloaded an

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 5, 2016. Sputnik, a hockey team sponsored by Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation, spoke about its winter 2015/2016 performance at a recent press conference, the corporation’s press service reports. According to the hockey club representatives, despite the relatively bad luck at the start of the season, the team managed to make it to the play-off and nearly made it to the next round of the Bratina Cup, losing to Neftekamsk’s three-time championship winner Toros. ‘There was a great surge of positive emotion at the end of the championship, and some time was needed to recover.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 4, 2016. The price of land went up by 5% in the last three months and by 18% in the last year, the real estate website N1.RU’s press service reports. ‘Land prices tend to go up in March when the gardening season begins, but last year they actually went down against January, from 65,400 RUR at the start of the year down to 60,900 RUR per 100m2 three months later,’ the press service says. This year, prices rose by 5% in the first three months and currently come to 71,900 RUR per 100m2 on average. This is 18% more than one year earlier, when the figure was 60,900 RUR.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 4, 2016. Ural Airlines decided to celebrate April Fool’s Day by offering special prices on domestic and international flights, the air carrier’s press service says. For example, reduced-price tickets are now available for Tomsk-Moscow, Barnaul-Moscow, Irkutsk-Moscow, Chita-Moscow, and Omsk-Moscow flights. Prices have also been reduced for Saint Petersburg-Tbilisi, Yekaterinburg-Tbilisi, Moscow-Tivat, Yekaterinburg-Paris, Moscow-Belgrad, and Moscow-Larnaca flights. The special offer holds for flights operated between April 1 and May 31, 2016. Bookings can only be

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 4, 2016. Starting from April 1, 2016, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) and UnionCard will no longer be partners, the bank’s press service reports. ‘This means all the UnionCards the bank has issued so far will be deactivated,’ the press service says. The bank’s customers are thus advised to get their UnionCards exchanged for their Unembossed Visa counterparts. The exchange can be performed at any of the bank’s branches any day as long as you have your passport and your UnionCard with you.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 4, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s innovative 12-196-01 and 12-196-02 gondola-type railcars can now be repaired and overhauled less frequently: the decision was to extend the time between repairs was taken by the railcar committee in Saratov, the company press service reports. The first overhaul used to be given to a railcar sixteen years after the commissioning date, now it comes to eighteen years. Also, the time/mileage between the manufacturing date and the first-time depot repairs as well as between the first-time depot repairs and the first overhaul used

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 4, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Volchansky subsidiary offered a guided tour of the plant to 5th and 6th graders from local School 23. According to the corporation’s press service, this was part of the plant’s job counseling program aimed at getting the schoolchildren interested in blue-collar and engineering jobs. The children were introduced to safety rules and the plant’s history and traditions and were shown some of the production departments. ‘The gas cylinder department and X-ray lab were the places to learn about the modern production control

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 1, 2016. Prices went down by 1.8% on Yekaterinburg existing home market compared with the start of the year and by 8.8% compared with one year earlier, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. As of March 28, 2016, the average asking price of a square meter of housing stood at 69,459 RUR. There are currently slightly over 10,300 apartments and 1,850 rooms in communal apartments for sale in the chamber’s database. It normally tales between four and half and five and a half months to make a sale. Prices declined most noticeably in the city’s second and third most expensive