Ural Airlines is launching a special offer on the company’s flight from Novosibirsk to Guangzhou and back. Between March 3, 2012 and April 4, 2012 all those willing to do so can book their tickets for this flight for ?249 (plus airport and air carrier charges). The offer is valid for all of the airline’s flights operated between March 3 and April 4, 2012, the airline’s press service reports. Tickets are available via the airline’s official website www.uralairlines.com as well as in the booking offices.

Russian Railways Public Company is not going to finance a rail welding production facility project the rails for which are to be manufactured at Mechel Group’s Chelyabinsk Iron & Steel Works (currently under construction), the company’s head Vladimir Yakunin told reporters in Chelyabinsk. ‘We have been considering our need for producing 100-meter rails for a long time. No such rails are manufactured at our facilities, especially no rails of such quality. Under our standards, a continuous welded rail requires 800-meter rails. The enterprise that is being put up next to the plant will weld

Yet another meeting of Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court regarding the claim of Concern Kalina’s minority shareholder Igor Platonov took place in Yekaterinburg recently. Platonov placed a claim against VTB Registrator with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court, asking to declare the writing of 2,844 ordinary shares of Concern Kalina (face value 70 RUR) off his account invalid and to restitute the shares onto his personal account. Platonov claims that the writing off, which took place on November 15, 2011, was done illegitimately and without his consent. VTB Registrator provided the court with

The vehicle operators of Yekaterinburg-based Concern Kalina are protesting against the layoffs that they feel are unlawful, their representative and Managing Partner of YurLiga Ivan Volkov told UrBC in all the detail. ‘There are twelve protesters, many of whom have worked for the company for over thirty years. The long-haul truck drivers had a salary of 13,000 RUR plus a 13,000 RUR monthly bonus if the employer felt like it. Now they have been fired. They were accused of entering exaggerated figures in their speedometer logs throughout the year 2011 in order to hoard fuel. However, no proof

The construction of a high-speed railway link between Moscow and Yekaterinburg is an uncertain project. The Russian Rail cannot decide yet whether there will be passengers willing to use the road, Vedomosti reports. The Director of Russian Railways’ daughter enterprise High-Speed Railways Denis Muratov promises in the fall of 2011 that the tender aimed at choosing the contractor for the project would be held in December 2012. According to his estimates, the construction of a 1,595-km road from Moscow through Nizhniy Novgorod and Kazan to Yekaterinburg would cost 1.5 trillion RUR. The trip

One of the world’s largest OCTG producers Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) is now shipping longitudinally welded large-diameter pipes meant for transporting natural gas from Turkmenistan’s largest deposit Southern Yolotan to the country, TMK press service reports. To meet the customer’s requirements, the production of longitudinally welded LDPs with special properties was mastered at TMK’s Volzhsky Pipe Plant (VTZ); for one, these pipes have more rigid geometric parameters and a special angle of chamfer as well as enhanced anti-corrosion coating. 12,000 tons of TMK’s longitudinally welded

Maria Maksimova insists that the twenty-two agreements signed by Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) and Nizhneserginsky Metal Goods Plant over various months of 2010 and worth over 19bn RUR altogether be declared invalid. According to the materials available via Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court’s website, the plant placed a petition with the court, asking to involve Maxi Group as a third party without its own claims in the case, as the company owns a 35.5% voting shareholding in the plant. NLMK supported this petition, and the court sustained it. The preliminary court hearing will

The Republic of Turkey accepted Sverdlovsk Region’s invitation to take part in the 3d International Industry & Innovations Exhibition/Forum Innoprom 2012. According to Turkey’s Embassy in Russia, the Turkish business mission will join Innoprom this year. The delegation will be headed by the Turkish Economics Minister Zafer Chaglayan. The invitation was presented to the Turkish party during the fourth meeting of a Russian-Turkish Economic Interaction Intergovernmental Committee’s work team in Istanbul in October 2011. The meeting was attended by Sverdlovsk Region’s Deputy Minister for

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court began looking into the claim laid by Kazakhstan-based Kaztemirtrans against Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK); the plaintiff insists on being paid 5.96m RUR. The money in question is the sum of the damage caused by a broken wheel rim and a broken portion of the all-rolled disc of the left wheel set in the carriage of freight train No. 2212 that was traveling from Zharly to Razyezd 202 at Kazakhstan Temir Zholy National Company’s Shubarkudyk-Sagiz section of Aktyubinsk Railways. The accident resulted in the derailing of the said carriage and eight

One more (the 23d) Airbus A320 was added to Ural Airlines’ fleet of vehicles recently. This time, the aircraft was purchased in Japan, where the plane had been used by a local air carrier for four years, or 4,000 hours. Just like the previously acquired planes, this one was bought on operational lease terms. The airplane has both the business and the economy class sections and will be used for operating scheduled flights. In fact, the new aircraft will already be used to operate a Yekaterinburg-Moscow flight today, the airline’s press service reports. Ural Airlines launched in fleet upgrade

Iset Construction Company decided not to appeal in court against the ruling regarding the company’s claim to Ural Exhibition Center. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court partially sustained Iset Construction Company’s claim earlier; the claim involved Ural Exhibition Center as the defendant and Rusgrad Construction Company as a third party in the case. The plaintiff insisted on being paid 246.28m RUR by the defendant. In the end, the court ruled that 245.94m should be paid. The sum in question was the debt owed by the defendant to the plaintiff for the building and assembly jobs at

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court sustained the claim placed by Ural Federal District of Rosprirodnadzor. The environmental agency insisted that Serov Ferrous Alloys Works pay a fine of over 18m RUR for the contamination of soil, Rosprirodnadzor reports. According to the court dossier, the damage to the soils was caused by chemical contamination, unauthorized waste dumping, and illegal cover-up of soil surface by the enterprise, Interfax-Ural reports.

TNK-BP BOD approved of buying a 100% shareholding (10,000 ordinary shares) in Koltsovo Fuel Filling Company from Koltsovo Airport for $30m as well as the purchase of a 100% shareholding in Activ Fuel Filling Complex for $70m, the holding reports. Now in December 2010, the governmental foreign investment monitoring committee allowed TNK-BP to buy a 100% stake in Koltsovo Filling Station that provides fuel to Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service is considering taking legal action against the distributors and dealers of ŠKODA, Hyundai, KIA, JAGUAR, Land Rover, and Ford automobiles and of AUDI, ŠKODA, and Volkswagen car parts, the Service’s press officer reports. Having looked into the existing relations between the distributors and the dealing and maintenance centers, the FAS stated that many of the distributors make their partners combine the selling and the after-sales services, which makes it difficult for the existing independent maintenance centers to enter the market: in order to get the

Officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Sverdlovsk Region Main Investigative Department instituted criminal proceedings against the management of Uraltransmash (based in Yekaterinburg and a member of Uralvagonzavod Corporation). The charges are based on Article 201 of Russia’s Criminal Code (abuse of office). The files for the investigation were supplied by the staff of the region’s Federal Security Service division, Kommersant refers to its own sources as saying. The Main Investigative Department’s inquiry team are now looking into the legitimacy of the plant’s deals with suppliers.

Sergey Bukreyev was appointed Deputy Director-General and Director for Development of ERGO Russia’s Ural branch. Prior to this new appointment, he was the director at the region’s directorate. ‘It is exactly in the North-West and the Urals that ERGO’s Russian business has been developing most successfully and rapidly over the last few years. This is why it was decided to upgrade the status of the regional directorates’ heads and to appoint them Deputy Directors-General. I hope that after the performance reports for 2012 become available for analysis, the heads of other regional directorates

Online voting for the best logo for Ural IT cluster is still in progress on Arena Multimedia International Training Center’s website. Eight projects have been offered for public scrutiny altogether. Some work on the logo for Ural IT Cluster, a non-profit partnership, was part of the agenda of Design Managers’ Days in Yekaterinburg last weekend. The event was attended by experts from British Higher School of Art & Design, Parsons The New School For Design, the Association of Design Management, Ural State University of Economics’ Marketing & International Management Department, and

Yekaterinburg Dairy Plant No. 1 will probably be converted into a Danone yoghurt and dairy products plant, Prime Agency reports. In fact, Unimilk Company (a member of Danone Unimilk Group) bought a 100% shareholding in Yekaterinburg Dairy Plant No.1 earlier, the company explains. Danone is also planning to increase the plant’s baby food output.

Microsoft Corporation is going to launch a micro-grant (up to $10,000) program for IT startups in 2012, CEO Microsoft Rus Strategic Technologies Department’s Seed Financing Fund Gaidar Magdanurov told RIA Novosti. ‘We intend to issue grants to finance a hundred projects over the next decade; last year, we offered grants to eight projects, and two grants have been issued since the beginning of the year; these amount to $40,000 and $50,000. This year we’ll also start offering micro-grants of up to $10,000, there will be at least six of those,’ he said. Magdanurov explained the company was

According to the preliminary data available, the consolidated net profit of the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International AG decreased by 17.76% in 2011 and thus amounted to ?968m, the bank’s press release states. At the same time, the company’s pre-tax profit rose by 6.68% last year compared with the year 2010, and came to ?1.37bn. The banking group’s net interest profit went up by 2.49% in 2011 and reached ?3.66bn. The final report will be published on March 29, Banki.ru reports.