November 18, 2013. The investigative authorities are now deciding whether criminal proceedings should be instituted regarding the fact that heat supply was interrupted in the southern part of Polevskoy, the spokesperson for public prosecution authorities of Sverdlovsk Region reports. The heat and hot water supply stopped at 12:10 PM on November 14 as the supplier, ZAO GAZEX, stopped delivering natural gas to the boiling house of Novaya Energetika. As a result, 190 apartment buildings with a total of 15,000 residents, seven kindergartens, six schools, three hospitals, and an orphanage were

November 18, 2013. The net loss of Uralmashzavod amounted to 2,420,335,000 RUR in the third quarter of 2013, while a year earlier, the figure was 741,907,000 RUR, the company’s quarterly report says. In January-September 2013, the enterprise’s revenue dropped down to 5,175,847,000 RUR against 7,336,188,000 RUR a year earlier.

November 15, 2013. Ural Airlines are now offering their customers a trip from Moscow to Beijing with convenient stopovers in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk. Such transit flights are operated through Yekaterinburg on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Wednesdays and through Chelyabinsk on Thursdays. As for the Beijing-Moscow flights, the ones with a stopover in Yekaterinburg are offered on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and stopovers in Chelyabinsk are available on Fridays, the company’s press service says. A one-way ticket with a stopover in either city costs from ?299. All of Ural Airlines’ flights

November 15, 2013. Yekaterinburg home prices keep rising slightly within the 0.1% to 0.2% a week range. Apartments have grown 3% more expensive since the beginning of the year. According to Ural Chamber of Real Estate, the median price of a square meter of an apartment for sale in Yekaterinburg was 72,201 RUR as of November 11, 2013. Since the start of the year, the number of places for sale has risen by 29%, and the number of rooms in communal apartments offered for sale has gone up by 45%. Over the last three months, the supply in the Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s database has remained

November 15, 2013. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (Uraltrac, a member of Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation) won a tender for the delivery of two B11 bulldozers to the Sochi division of UES Federal Company, Uralvagonzavod’s press service reports. The machines have a great mission: to provide uninterrupted power supply for the Sochi Olympics. The bulldozers will become a part of the ‘Olympic Reserve’ of the fleet of vehicles that will be used for the electric mains maintenance in February 2014. The bulldozers will be shipped to their customers this month. UES are preparing their

November 15, 2013. MegaFon’s consolidated profit rose by 8.3% in the first nine months of 2013 compared with a year earlier and amounted to 217.4bn RUR, the telecommunications provider’s financial report says. OIBDA went up by 19.1% since the beginning of the year as well and reached over 102bn RUR; the OIBDA profitability increased by 46.9% against 42.7% in 2012. MegaFon’s net profit rose by 60.8% compared with a year earlier and came to 41.5bn RUR. CAPEX was 23.2bn RUR. The company’s free cash flow was 90bn RUR as of September 30, 2013. In Q3’13, MegaFon’s consolidated profit was 9% more

November 15, 2013. The customs officers of Ural Customs Administration conducted an inspection of over 27,000 documents that proved compliance with all the customs bans and limits and detected 211,420 pirated items, the Administration’s press service reports. The documentary checks revealed 54 documents were invalid; nine of those were presented in the process of declaring footwear, clothing, and furniture at the customs. Measures were taken in all these cases: the declaring party was informed of having produced invalid documentation, and, where necessary, inquiries were sent to the executive

November 14, 2013. Walkbase, an optimization platform for brick-and-mortar shops that got some investments from Projector Venture, a fund run by Yekaterinburg IT entrepreneur Leonid Volkov, attracted another ?3m worth of investments. The money was supplied by SBT Venture Capital and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, former CEO Nokia, Walkbase’s press release says. Walkbase was developed in Finland as a real-world navigation analysis platform that could be used by shopping malls and exhibition centers, for example. ‘The idea behind Walkbase is to give these traditional shops the same opportunities that

November 14, 2013. Ural Airlines offered their services to 3,782 passengers between January 1 and October 31, 2013, which was 26% more than a year earlier. 28,712 flights have been operated since the beginning of the year, including 10,637 international flights, 11,737 domestic flights, and 6,338 flights around the CIS, the airline’s press service reports. The airline’s passenger turnover rose by 23% in the ten months of 2013 against the ten months of 2012 and amounted to 10,028,223,000 passenger-kilometers. In October 2013, Ural Airlines operated 2,973 flights, including 980 international

November 14, 2013. This week, three of Koltso Urala’s branches are celebrating their birthdays: Krasnobrodsky and Novokuznetsky near Kemerovo, and a branch in Surgut. Their ‘consolidated age’ is now ten, the bank’s press service reports. The bank’s branch in the north of Surgut welcomed its first customers on November 12, 2010. For three years, its employees have been working hand in hand with the local residents and get thank-you letters and win professional skills contests all the time. The branch Director Larissa Bogdanova says the secret of their success lies in their team spirit and

November 14, 2013. MegaFon is registering an increase in the mobile Internet traffic at nighttime – the figure rose by 35% over the last month, the company’s press service reports. ‘In October, MegaFon customers downloaded 180,000 gigabytes more data than in September. In many ways, this has to do with the fact that our customers started using the Internet XL option 25% more often. Now this option offers you 25 gigabytes of data during the day and unlimited access during the night,’ says MegaFon Ural’s Mass Market Business Development Director Sergey Alferov. It is the Internet XL option that

November 14, 2013. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation plans to take part in the construction of a railway carriage-making plant in Vietnam, the corporation’s press service reports. On November 12, a memorandum on cooperation was signed by Vietnam-Russia Joint Bank and Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation in Hanoi, Vietnam. The ceremony was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of Vietnam Truong Tan Sang. The memorandum mainly dwells upon cooperation in the implementation of Uralvagonzavod’s joint projects in Vietnam and upon the

November 13, 2013. A new international mail exchange terminal was opened at Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg today. The terminal is located in the freight department. The volume of mail delivered to Koltsovo is expected to go up to 12,000kg a day as soon as December 2013, the Russian Post reports. ‘The new terminal will mean speedier delivery to the addressee (2-3 times faster) as well as more orders and therefore increased economic efficiency for the Russian Post. The creation of this terminal will also become an important part of the relationship developing between Sverdlovsk Region and

November 13, 2013. ChTPZ Group and SOT Plant are going to ship pipes and take-offs (diameter 820mm, wall width 12, 17, 19 mm made of K56 steel) to Transneft. The total volume of shipments of pipes made at Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant is more than 12,500,000kg, that of pipes made at SOT Plant is 293 units, the Group’s press service reports. All the take-offs and some of the pipes (about 2,000,000kg) meant for the third extension to the Zapolyarye Purpe oil pipeline are to be insulated with polyurethane coating with a protective layer at the new sections of Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant. The

November 13, 2013 Ural Airlines announce the launch of a special price offer on its Yekaterinburg-Tel Aviv-Yekaterinburg flight. The new, advantageous tariff is a part of the new tariff scheme that will mean passengers will be able to save a considerable amount of money when booking and to choose a convenient departure date, the airline’s press service reports. If you book six days before the flight, the round trip ticket from Yekaterinburg to Tel Aviv and back will cost you 13,600 RUR; if you book two months before the flight, the price will come to 17,990 RUR, and if you book 31 to 59 days

November 13, 2013. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation (UVZ) and Semey Engineering from Kazakhstan signed a founding treaty on the creation of a joint venture that will offer O&M services for armored vehicles. The JV is to be called UVZ-Semey Engineering. The treaty was signed in the course of the 10th Interregional Russia-Kazakhstan Cooperation Forum that was attended by the two country’s presidents: Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev. Semey Engineering is actually Kazakhstan’s only company to deal in overhauls and upgrades of armored vehicles. UVZ was represented

November 13, 2013. While in Sverdlovsk Region, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to Ural Locomotives (a joint venture of Sinara Group and Siemens AG in Verkhnyaya Pyshma), where the production department for ES2G Lastochka trains was launched on that day, Sinara Group’s PR Department reports. Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Russia’s Industry & Trade Minister Denis Manturov, President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, Siemens AG BOD Chairman Joe Kaeser, and Sinara Group BOD Chairman Dmitri Pumpyanski, looked at the body production section, the carriage assembly section, and

November 12, 2013. Russian President Vladimir Putin opened the plenary session of the 10th Interregional Russia-Kazakhstan Cooperation Forum today. He said 76 Russian Federation constituencies were currently doing business with different territories in Kazakhstan. Over 200 cooperation agreements were signed, and the two countries’ bilateral trade turnover increased by 4 times in the last year. ‘Investments in Kazakh economy came to $1bn in the first half of 2013 alone, which is 40% more than a year earlier,’ Putin said. He said that the two countries needed to cooperate within the framework

November 12, 2013. 12,687 people found a job through Yekaterinburg Employment Center in January-October 2013, the center’s press service says. All in all, 20,351 people applied to the center over the given period, and 70,651 people placed their queries as to the current labor market situation. Also, 3,993 applicants wanted some job counseling. The share of people who found jobs over this period was 48.4% of applicants; as of November 1, 2013, 3,315 people are registered with the center as jobless. The city’s official unemployment rate is 0.45%. Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises submitted

November 12, 2013. Russian Copper Company is exhibiting its achievements at the 10th Interregional Russia-Kazakhstan Cooperation Forum and is presenting an innovative stand with visual displays of the company’s mining projects in Russia and Kazakhstan. The Russian Copper Company Group is one of Russia’s top three copper producers and has been investing actively in Kazakhstan. In 2004-2012, the investments on the company’s part amounted to over $500m. On the first day of the exhibition, RRC’s stand was visited by an official delegation consisting of Deputy Minister for Regional Development