The Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Nicaragua is to be opened in Yekaterinburg on January 27, 2012. According to the press service of Sverdlovsk Region Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs, the opening ceremony will be attended by Chairman of the Nicaraguan department of Russian-Nicaraguan Trade, Economic, Scientific & Technical Cooperation Committee and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister of the Republic of Nicaragua Manuel Coronel. The agenda of the event covers a business forum and meetings with representatives of the Urals’ business community. The companies arriving in the

The International Investment Consulting Center awarded Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) the Grand-Prix of Bona Fide Supplier 2011, an All-Russian contest, and placed the company on the Federal Bona Fide Suppliers Register, MMK PR Department reports. This yearly contest’s key aims are to support the government’s policy on providing a competitive market economy and to develop the Russian companies whose business activities fit with the state-determined supplying standards. Recent certification audits confirmed that MMK can produce goods of the needed quality within contract-specified

Sberbank of Russia’s Ural branch keeps voicing its disagreement to the actions taken by a liquidation committee in respect of five outlets of Magnum strong drinks chain (the asset of Oleg Fleganov’s Omega Group). According to the data available from Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court, the bank’s claims were placed on December 30, 2011. Sberbank demands that the actions of Magnum Strong Drinks Market 2, Magnum 3, Magnum 6. Magnum 7, and Magnum 9 liquidation committee be declared illegitimate. The bank also insists that the tax service re-registers these companies with the Unified State

Czech Connect Airlines a.s reports that the company’s Board of Directors placed an insolvency application with Ostrava regional court on January 18, 2012. The air carrier used to operate flights from Yekaterinburg to Karlsbad. ‘Czech Connect Airlines a.s. founders and management are now doing their best to find a way of keeping the company and minimize the damage to customers, employees, and business partners,’ the airline reports. Due to the above-mentioned factors, the company halted its business activity for the period between January 21, 2012 and March 24, 2012 (the end of wintertime

Yekaterinburg Municipal Council laid million-ruble claims against the construction company Atomstroycomplex. The claims are to be processed by Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court in late January and early February 2012. According to the court’s files, one of the claims is related to an overdue rent payment that comes to 37.09m RUR plus 22.77m RUR worth of penalties. The court hearing was set for February 9, 2012. Another claim concerns an overdue payment for the use of a land allotment that amounts to 1.78m RUR. This claim will be heard in court on January 25, 2012. On January 30, 2012, the

Russian sales of passenger cars might rise by 4% and amount to 2.6m cars, PwC reports. ‘We expect the sales dynamics to slow down in the future, so the total number of cars sold in Russia this year will probably not exceed 2.6m units, and if negative factors prevail, sales might drop to 2.3m,’ the agency says. The company’s report states that last year’s sales of passenger cars reached 2.5m units. Analysts and PwC observe that the passenger cars market rose by 40% in quantitative respect in 2011, which was possible due to growing consumer confidence, the state subsidies program, and car loans

The State Labor Inspectorate is now investigating a multi-casualty lethal accident at Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Plant (Evraz KGOK). At about 8:50 AM on January 17, 2012, three track servicemen were hit by a diesel locomotive going down freight line 54 of Karyernaya Station on the premise of Evraz KGOK. Doctors arriving at the scene of the accident stated that one of the victims was dead; the second one, who was heavily injured, was transferred to Central Municipal Hospital only to die there after a while, whereas the third victim was in no need of hospitalization. An ad hoc

The director of Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Plant Construction Management was ordered by Sverdlovsk Region division of State Labor Inspectorate to eliminate the violations detected in the course of a scheduled inspection. It was revealed in the course of this scheduled, multi-faceted inspection of the company by a state labor inspector that twenty-five workplaces in the company are qualified as Class 3.1 for working conditions (namely, harmful working conditions), but the employer does not provide the workers with the benefits and compensations they are entitled to. Then, the company’s car

Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government and the region’s Minister for Industry & Science Alexander Petrov held a meeting with Alexander Timofeyev, the representative of the local Rezhnickel, Ufaleynickel, and Serov nickel deposit’s new proprietor HIGHMETALS KDS. ‘The plant is going through a rough patch at the moment. Thanks to the efforts made by Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin and Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Evgeny Kuivashev, we managed to prevent the upcoming layoffs and the closing down of the plant. The

The first payments on the 5bn-ruble loan taken out to put up Yekaterinburg EXPO Exhibition Center must be made in April 2012. As the building itself has not paid off yet, it is possible that the center’s stockholder, the Mid-Urals Development Corporation, will have to have its debt restructured through a new loan scheme, Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Public Property Management Vitaly Nedelsky announced at a recent press conference. ‘Paying off the loan is the duty of the stockholders and not of the state. This includes the Mid-Urals Development Corporation that owns an 82% stake in the

Seven people were elected as members of Concern Kalina’s new Board of Directors. The cosmetics manufacturer reports these are Sanjiv Kakkar, Alexei Minakov, Alexander Petrov, Nikolay Geller, Mark Wessel Remko, Theodore Kitsos, and SvetlanaTsareva. The previously appointed BOD members had to resign before the end of their term. Only Alexander Petrov and Nikolay Geller managed to get re-elected; former BOD Chairman Timur Goryaev did not become a BOD member.

Ural Airlines now offers a direct international flight from Irkutsk Airport to Guangzhou. Flights will be operated every Sunday starting April 1, 2012. The cheapest round trip tickets are available for ?299 (plus fees and charges), the airline’s press service reports.

President of the Diamond Way Buddhist Center of the Karma Kagyu Lineage in Kachkanar Alexander Berezin appealed to journalists on behalf of the community of believers who have been working on a Buddhist monastery Shadtchupling in Mount Kachkanar, Sverdlovsk Region, for the last seventeen years. In his letter, Berezin explains that all these years the local Buddhists cannot up the monastery at the mountain even though the conditions are very propitious there for Buddhist practices. For over a decade, the believers kept trying to get the necessary land allotment registered but have failed so

Metallosnabzheniye I Sbyt’s January issue featured a rating of Russia’s best ferrous and non-ferrous metals manufacturers and traders in the second half of 2011. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was mentioned as one of Russia’s Top 3 deep-level processing goods manufacturers and the country’s 4th best section steel producer. What is more, MMK’s daughter enterprise MMK METIZ was announced one of Russia’s Top 3 hardware plants. ‘MMK once again proved second to none in the production of flat-rolled goods. According to the rating of Russia’s best ferrous and non-ferrous metals

A train full of nuclear waste will soon set off from Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant to Krasnoyarsk Territory, where a depository for Russian and foreign nuclear waste is expected to be built. The date of departure (which will get going a large-scale series of nuclear waste transportation missions from all over Russia to Siberia) is not disclosed, EcoZaschita Group reports. Under RosAtom’s plans, 22,000 tons of used nuclear fuel will be relocated to Siberia before 2025. This means that three echelons with nuclear waste will arrive in the closed city of Krasnoyarsk 26 every two months, the

‘Stolnik Publishers decided to close down Yekaterinburg after the magazine’s prospects on today’s advertising market had been thoroughly evaluated. The publishers feel that working on a men’s glossy magazine would suit the current situation better than keeping on investing in the printed business press,’ Yekaterinburg Editor-in-Chief Marina Zhivulina explained in answer to a query from UrBC. ‘As a result, the city of Yekaterinburg now witnesses a new project: Mister, the magazine produced by the same publishing house. For the time being, Mister functions as a supplement to Stolnik. The idea

The rating agency Expert RA affirmed the solvency rating of United Machine-Building Plants (Uralmash-Izhora Group) at A (high solvency level), with Stable rating outlook. The agency’s analysts report that the rating was favorably affected by the increase in the company’s capital between December 31, 2008 and June 30, 2011 as well as by net assets growth and the positive net working capital. ‘It must be noted that United Machine-Building Plants keeps reducing its debt burden and expects to finish the financial year 2011 with some positive net profit,’ Expert RA says. As for the factors that

The international rating agency Fitch affirmed Russia’s long-term Issuer Default Rating at BBB, while the rating outlook was reduced from Positive down to Stable, the agency reports. ‘The political instability is on the increase in this country, while the global economy development forecast has worsened since the agency last confirmed Russia’s rating in September 2011,’ the agency’s release states. Fitch also affirmed Russia’s short-term rating at F3 and the country ‘ceiling’ at BBB+. The likelihood of a rating promotion that was strong with a Positive outlook is now lower, so the current

Ural Airlines is now offering its customers tickets for scheduled flights to Cologne, the company’s press service reports. Starting April 2, 2012, flights will be operated from eleven Russian cities, with a stop in Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. These will be available three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; starting June, five flights a week will be offered. All of Ural Airlines’ flights will be operated using the comfortable Airbus A320 planes that have full-scale business and economy class seats. The timetable has been arranged so as to be as convenient for the passengers

Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights agency) carried out both a scheduled and an unscheduled on-site inspection of Eldorado electronic goods chain between September 19, 2011 and October 14, 2011 and between December 5, 2011 and December 20, 2011, respectively. Six outlets selling hi-tech household appliances, DVDs, and other goods were checked for compliance with the consumer rights protection and sanitary legislation. 7,984 items offered for sale were inspected, including 346 hi-tech items and 6,806 audio disks and DVDs; 6,276 items out of those inspected turned