December 9, 2014. Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (a member enterprise of ChTPZ Group) designed and developed a new kind of 88.9x5.49mm pumping and compression pumps with ChT-VT first-generation premium threaded joints, the enterprise’s press service reports. The product is meant for steam injectors that have to handle extremely high temperature (over 300 degrees centigrade); these pipes are expected to make extraction of high-viscosity oil easier. Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant’s experts’ computer-aided strength calculation has already proved that pipes with ChT-VT threaded joints can be used at

December 9, 2014. Avialeasing Investment & Finance Company laid a claim against UTair Airlines, demanding that the air carrier be declared bankrupt. The investment company’s claim was registered with Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous District Arbitration Court today. The arbitration court is currently processing several claims relating to UTair’s unpaid debts. For one, Alfa Bank insists on being repaid 11.8m RUR and BFA Bank demands its 603.5m RUR back as well.

December 8, 2014. Yekaterinburg came 11th in the rating of Russia’s most prosperous cities that was created by the Sekret Firmy magazine. The magazine’s analysts looked into the weighted average cost of a car and of an apartment (per square meter) based on online ads on Avito in 155 Russian cities with the population of over 100,000 people. The analysts processed ads posted online at the end of the first, second, and third quarter of the year 2014. In Yekaterinburg, the average price of a square meter of housing stands at 75,000 RUR, that of an automobile at 230,000 RUR. In Moscow (the

December 8, 2014. Uralvagonzavod Corporation presented its multi-purpose vehicle TM2 at Russia’s Transport, an international forum and exhibition in Moscow, the corporation’s press service reports. A presentation on the advantages of this all-purpose, wheel/track-mounted vehicle for relocation of railway carriages around the premises of industrial enterprises and repair depots was made for Russian Vice Premier Dmitri Rogozin by Uralvagonzavod’s Director-General Oleg Sienko. He said, for one, that today’s TMV2 was a serially produced vehicle that was part of the import replacement program for

December 8, 2014. Yekaterinburg Fine Arts Museum is going to re-create the office occupied by the Hermitage Museum employees during the war evacuation period. The city council says the local authorities are quite interested in having a culture/education center called the Hermitage-Urals here. ‘This project will be financially difficult to implement. Nevertheless, thanks to the city council and the fine arts museum’s efforts, a reconstruction of the building will begin, and additional space will be provided for museum depositories,’ the city council’s press service says. Head of Yekaterinburg

December 8, 2014. The co-founder of Malysheva 73 Igor Zavodovsky won the Delovoy Kvartal magazine’s Person of the Year contest as the Developer of the Year, Delovoy Kvartal Yekaterinburg reports. Zavodovsky has been with the company since the day it was founded. He is in charge of strategic issues, general management of construction projects, commercial estate transactions. Zavodovsky was one of the instrumental managers in the construction of the fourth extension to Greenwich Shopping Center in Yekaterinburg. The company is now getting ready to have its GreenPark Business Center in downtown

December 8, 2014. Proxima Capital and Yermak Developers set up Rosagromarket, a holding that now plans to put up a wholesale distribution center in Yekaterinburg, Kommersant reports. Two such centers operate in Moscow Region at the moment, and a suitable location near Moscow is being searched for yet another one. Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, and Vladivostok are expected to get a center each, with their area ranging from 50,000 sq m to 300,000 sq m. The first seven centers are estimated to require $500m to $700m worth of investments. The distribution centers are supposed to act

December 5, 2014. A resident of Chelyabinsk Region stands accused of eleven instances of housing fraud in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities report. ‘The inquest team claims the man rented apartments in different parts of Yekaterinburg for a few days in February and March 2012. He allegedly advertised these apartments online and in the newspapers’ To Let’ classified sections on the same day. The interested tenants were shown a fake ID and fictitious title papers; after the rent was paid to him, the ‘owner’ would disappear,’ they say. The man is now involved in

December 5, 2014. Some 500m RUR will be allocated from Sverdlovsk Region’s budget to relocate Yekaterinburg Maternity Care Clinic from Central Stadium to Academic District. The money will be spent on design and construction of the new building; the land allotment has already been provided for the purpose. The clinic is being transferred as part of Yekaterinburg Central Stadium reconstruction; besides, there are plans to set up a medical cluster in Academic: the cluster will comprise the maternity clinic, Ural State Medical University campus, Institute for Injury Treatment & Orthopedics,

December 5, 2014. Vitaly Galkin, the former Director-General of MMK Metalurji (MMK’s Turkey-based asset), was appointed Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Key Customer Sales Director. Yuri Chaikovsky is now MMK Metalurji’s new DG, the company’s press service reports. MMK Director-General Pavel Shilyaev says the company is extremely interested in making its cooperation with the key customers even more efficient and points out that ‘Vitaly Galkin’s professionalism and many years’ experience in the international business environment on the Eurasian border are the formula for success’.

December 5, 2014. Some of construction projects in Yekaterinburg might get ‘frozen’ next year, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s President Tatiana Demenok said at a press conference. ‘Primarily, this will be the type of housing that offers the worst value for money ratio, which actually depends on quite a few factors such as location, apartment layout, and others. In my opinion, no large-scale stoppages are to be expected, only some of the projects will be affected,’ she said. According to Demenok, all of the local small-size developers are at risk.

December 5, 2014. Damage resulting from corruption-related crimes now under investigation by Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Investigative Committee amounted to 41.059m RUR in nine months of 2014, head of the Second Department for Investigation of Priority Cases Alexei Shmakov said at a press conference. ‘Our job is not only to detect a crime and make sure the culprits get punished, but also to ensure repair of damage caused by this crime. This is why we are working to find out about and seize the criminals’ assets: 27m RUR worth of property was seized over the given period in

December 5, 2014. Residents of Yekaterinburg and nearby towns were invited to consider merging together as a conurbation, Yekaterinburg Council’s press service reports. The proposal was put forth by Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma’s Local Government, Culture & Information Policy & PR Committee. Acting head of Yekaterinburg Council Legal Department Dmitri Stenin explained the project was about bringing the normative acts on remote areas in compliance with the existing legislation. At the initial stage, eleven small settlements were chosen out of twenty-nine towns within the potential

December 5, 2014. Vitaly Galkin, the former Director-General of MMK Metalurji (MMK’s Turkey-based asset), was appointed Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Key Customer Sales Director. Yuri Chaikovsky is now MMK Metalurji’s new DG, the company’s press service reports. MMK Director-General Pavel Shilyaev says the company is extremely interested in making its cooperation with the key customers even more efficient and points out that ‘Vitaly Galkin’s professionalism and many years’ experience in the international business environment on the Eurasian border are the formula for success’.

December 4, 2014. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation won the Russian Government’s National Quality Prize among enterprises employing over 1,000 people. The prestigious prize was awarded by Decree 1253 dated November 27, 2014 ‘for outstanding achievements in product and service quality and for highly efficient quality management methods,’ the corporation’s press service reports. Uralvagonzavod Corporation has applied for the prize for the first time this year; the award is considered to be the government’s highest assessment of how good a company’s quality management is and

December 4, 2014. Sverdlovsk Region court officers acted to collect over 5bn RUR worth of debts from legal entities in the first ten months of 2014, Deputy Head of the Federal Service of Court Officers’ Sverdlovsk Region division Elena Sidorova said in her interview to UrBC. All in all, 53,000 enforcement proceedings involving legal entities were completed, with the financial outcome at 200m RUR higher than a year earlier. At the same time, the number of debtor businesses went up as well: the number of enforcement proceedings under way rose by 11,500 and came to 179,194 altogether, whereas

December 4, 2014. SME Investment Fund (aka Sverdlovsk Investment Fund) now operates in Sverdlovsk Region. An applying company can receive between 11.5m RUR and 34.5m RUR worth of investments, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department reports. The Fund is expected to invest in existing small and medium enterprises trying to expand their production. Machine-building, the metallurgical sector, new materials, chemical technologies, medicine and pharmaceuticals, electronics and tool-making, IT, the timber industry, and the environment will be considered priority investment

December 4, 2014. The sentence pronounced on two of Uralkhimplast’s former employees Irina Rusakova and Maria Usoltseva has taken effect: the two women were found guilty of a breach of commercial confidentiality (Article 183 (part 1) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code). The spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s prosecution authorities reports that these women started collecting data on their former employer’s activity after they had left the company. In July-December 2012, Maria Usoltseva received multimedia messages on the company’s range of products, prices, amount of deliveries, and

December 4, 2014. Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeniy Kuivashev signed a bill relating to Sverdlovsk Region’s budget in 2016 and 2017, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department reports. According to the Governor, improving people’s living standards throughout the entire constituency remains the Mid-Urals’ authorities’ priority. ‘This budget was adopted in strict compliance with all the existing demands: we remain in charge of all of our social responsibilities, and there is a certain sum allocated for development. Working towards the President’s ‘May Decrees’ as well as

December 3, 2014. Uralvagonzavod Corporation decided to set up a youth organization that will unite young workers from all of the corporation’s member enterprises and will help deal with the most important issues in youth policy. According to the corporation’s press service, the creation of a youth organization will become the next important step in the holding’s integration process. ‘Nearly all of our plant, design offices, and scientific research institutes have youth organizations of this or that kind, the most efficient ones being the organizations at Yekaterinburg-based Plant 9 and