On January 30, 2012, TGK-9 Board of Directors is going to consider selling Bogoslovskaya power station to United Company RUSAL. The general agreement to this extent was reached at the end of 2011. According to TGK-9’s reports, the company’s BOD will consider selling the station’s assets and its stake in Bogoslovskaya power station.

Interfax Center for Economic Analysis carried one of the first official banks’ ratings for the year 2011. SKB-Bank was featured among Russia’s Top 40 lending institutions: the bank was given the 40th position in the rating and declared one of Sverdlovsk Region’s five leading banks. SKB-Bank’s rating position improved considerably last year: at the start of 2011, the bank was given the 46th position as its assets volume amounted to 88.8bn RUR. According to the data provided by the agency’s analysts, the bank’s assets volume rose by 31.2% in the course of the year and exceeded 110.4bn RUR. What

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s performance indicators improved considerably last year. For one, the bank’s own funds rose by 42% and came to 9.67bn RUR. Its assets increased by 36% and amounted to 100.72bn RUR. In fact, this increase in the bank’s efficiency in 2011 was in many respects more pronounced than in the Russian banking system on average, the UBRD President Anton Solovyev said at a press conference recently. ‘We improved the quality of services rendered to our customers. Our philosophy boils down to this: do not wait for the customers to come to you, come to your

EVRAZ Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK) Board of Directors decided to close down the subsidiary of EVRAZ NTMK Museum & Exhibition Center on April 30, 2012. The decision got five BOD members’ votes, with no one voting against the proposal or abstaining from voting. NTMK Museum was founded in 1975. In 1996, a new concept was developed and the museum was turned into NTMK Museum & Exhibition Center (1,500 sq m) that had no counterparts among all of Russia’s metallurgical industry on-site museums. The Center comprises a museum of the plant’s history, an advertising/exhibition

The borders of the specially protected Russia’s Foresters National Park based in Sverdlovsk Region have been changed. Sverdlovsk Region Government’s decree to this effect was published by Oblastnaya Gazeta today. Under this decree, the borders of the reserve were changed as 0.267 hectares of land located in Quarters 79 and 81 of the park’s Lesoparkovy Forestry were allocated for the construction of Lukoil-PermNefteProdukt’s gas filling station (Class 5 under sanitary classification, fifty-meter sanitary buffer zone). The decree states that the decision was preliminarily approved of by a board

Ural Airlines made the process of booking plane tickets via the air carrier’s official website much easier, the airline’s press service reports. Shopping for tickets at the company’s online booking office is now more convenient. Passengers can use their bank card to pay for a ticket virtually up to the start of a check-in. To make sure these payments are secure, only 3dSecure-supporting bank cards are accepted for payment if the transaction is carried out eighteen hours before departure time or later. Tickets become unavailable for purchase at the company’s website www.uralairlines.com four

Starting March 7, Ural Airlines will be operating a new scheduled flight from Nizhniy Novgorod to Yerevan and back. Flights will be operated every Wednesday; tickets start from ?155 (plus fees and charges). All of Ural Airlines’ flights are operated using Airbus A320 planes with a full-scale business class. Tickets are available at the booking offices or via the air carrier’s website www.uralairlines.com.

The clash over NLMK Group’s assets still has not been settled in Sverdlovsk Region. M.N. Maksimova’s claims against Nizhneserginsky Metal Goods Plant were placed with the arbitration court. The plaintiff insists that some of the decisions made by the plant’s stockholders be declared invalid. The plant is actually a member of Vladimir Lisin’s NLMK Group. Meanwhile, the defendant does admit that there exists a disagreement between the plant and its former owner Nikolai Maksimov and his relatives. ‘Court disputes between NLMK and its daughter enterprises and N.V. Maksimov, the former executive

The power generating unit BN 600 at Beloyarskaya nuclear power station is now working at reduced capacity so that the condensing unit of one the turbine power generators could be repaired, the station’s press service reports. Power was reduced at 3:00 PM Moscow time in accordance with the application submitted to the power network dispatcher. ‘The equipment is working in the usual mode, with no deviations. Once the repairs of the condensing unit have been completed, the turbine generator will be reset to work at full capacity, so the power unit’s electric power capacity will go back to its

Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service in Ural Federal District imposed a fine on Uralmashzavod (Taxpayer Identification Number 6672346635) for violating the existing regulations for share-issuing procedures (Article 15.17 of Russia’s Administrative Offense Code).

Russia’s Ministry for Industry is to present the country’s application for hosting EXPO 2020 in Davos, Switzerland, in the course of the current economic forum. The candidate Russian city for hosting the exhibition is Yekaterinburg. In addition to Moscow-based officials, the representatives of EXPO 2020 application committee, Sverdlovsk Region’s Minister for International & Foreign Economic Relations Alexander Kharlov, and Mayor of Yekaterinburg Evgeny Porunov arrived in Switzerland as well. It was reported today that after a recent tender, a 6.5m RUR contract was signed for the

Delegates from Byelorussia, France, Germany, and Turkey have already confirmed their intention to take part in Innoprom 2012 this summer, the exhibition’s coordinating committee reports. Innoprom 2012 will be held in the International Exhibition Center Yekaterinburg EXPO in Yekaterinburg on July 12-15, 2012. The event is expected to be supported by the Russian Federation Government; the coordinating committee is actually chaired by Deputy Head of Government Igor Sechin. In 2011, over four hundred companies from thirty different countries took part in the exhibition. This year, the number of

Some of Yekaterinburg-based Adidas stores are closing down for the time being. The company explains this has to do with renovations at the points of sale. UrBC was informed that the closing stores are the ones located in Greenwich and Park House Shopping Centers. Adidas told UrBC that these stores are currently being remodeled and that some new equipment is being introduced there as well. The stores are expected to reopen on February 5, 2012.

Ural Airlines came up with a special price offer for male passengers because of the upcoming Defender of the Fatherland Day (February 23d): they can buy tickets for Samara-Yerevan flight with a 15% discount through the end of February, the airline’s press service reports. The offer is valid for flights operated between January 30 and February 27, 2012. With this discount, the cheapest one-way tickets will be available for ?155 (excluding fees and charges). Flights from Samara to the Armenian capital city are operated every Monday.

The area of the site that will house World Universal Fair EXPO 2020 in case Yekaterinburg gets selected as the hosting city for the event might come to over 400 hectares, the Director-General of EXPO 2020 Application Committee Eric Bugulov said in an interview to Interfax-Ural. ‘We hope to be able to develop one of the largest sites in the history of EXPO – with the area of over 400 hectares – and to invite more than two hundred countries to take part in the exhibition,’ he said. Bugulov explains that Yekaterinburg’s comparative advantage, in contrast to the other candidates for hosting the

Claims against the construction company Atomstroycomplex Corporation were placed with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court recently, with Yekaterinburg Municipal Council as the plaintiff. Counts come to 917,920 RUR, 286,630, and 49,140 RUR. The city council had actually laid multi-million claims against the company before; these claims are to be considered by arbitration court in late January and early February 2012. According to the court’s files, one of the claims has to do with unpaid rent, another one – with a debt resulting from the use of a land allotment.

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) came up with a production and operation performance report for the last quarter of 2011 and the entire year. In 2011, TMK shipped 4,232,000 tons of steel pipes to its customers, which exceeded the figures for 2010 by 6.6%. ‘The results of the company’s performance in 2011 proved as good as our expectations. Our grwoth was mainly due to increased shipments of more hi-tech weldless goods,’ TMK reports. On the whole, given the existing agreements with the customers and provided that the current market trends hold, the company expects its shipments volume to go up

The 42nd World Economic Forum will be held in Davos on January 25-29, 2012. In the course of the event, a presentation on Yekaterinburg as the candidate city for hosting the International Exhibition EXPO 2020 will be made. Mayor of Yekaterinburg and Chairman of Yekaterinburg Municipal Council Evgeny Porunov will join the Russian delegation that will be presenting the Urals’ capital to the global community. A big pavilion called EXPO 2020 Yekaterinburg, with the area of 400 sq m, was built in Davos specially for the occasion. The pavilion will serve as a hosting place for business

The rating agency Standard & Poor's upgraded the Russian cosmetics manufacturer and distributor Concern Kalina’s national scale credit rating from ruA+ to ruAА+ and took the company’s rating off its CreditWatch list (the rating was placed there on October 18, 2010, with Positive rating outlook). The rating was then called off at the issuer’s request, the agency reports. ‘Concern Kalina’s rating resulted from our analysis of the company’s own solvency and the presumed support from Unilever PLC (A+/Stable/A-1). This rating also takes into account Unilever’s status as Kalina’s primary

Andrei & Evgeniy Zubitsky announced that they no longer have any control over Ufaleynickel’s shares. The enterprise reports this happened because they do not have a stake in the issuer’s business anymore. According to Ufaleynickel’s official data, Andrei & Evgeniy Zubitsky used to have a 32.49% and a 30.01% stake in the company, respectively. Meanwhile, it was announced last week that HIGHMETALS KDS became the new owner of Ufaleynickel, Rezhnickel, and Serov nickel deposit.