UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 12, 2011. Heads of an NGO EXPO 2020 Application Committee are coming to Yekaterinburg this week. The important issues on their agenda are defining the permanent members of a working team that will promote Yekaterinburg as a candidate for hosting the Global Universal Exhibition Expo 2020 and determining the ways in which Russia’s Industry & Science Ministry, Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region authorities, and the Committee will work together. Now the final decision on where the exhibition will be held is to be taken through voting at the Bureau International

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 12, 2011. Russian Copper Company is going to install a crusher produced by Metso Minerals at the 220-meter mine level at its Mikheyevsky Ore Mining & Processing Plant. According to the company’s press service, the primary crusher has the capacity of processing 4,000 tons of ore an hour and will be installed directly at the open mine that is currently under construction at Mikheyevsky Ore Mining & Processing Plant. The use of a crusher which is so highly productive and which delivers the ore onto the main belt and then directly onto the processing plant

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 12, 2011. Academic District of Yekaterinburg was recently declared the best real estate among the city’s newly built objects by most of the people present at the business function dedicated to next year’s strategies on Yekaterinburg’s real estate market. The function was held in Yekaterinburg. The success of Academic District lies not only in the unparalleled scale of the project but also in the developer’s determination to make the district’s architecture both expressive and original. In the meantime, France, Israel, Italy, Russia, and the United States’ leading

Rosaviation decided in the course of its November meeting on chartered flights permissions to impose a ban on VIM Avia, Tatarstan, and Yakutia operating flights to Europe, the Association of Russian tour operators reports. ‘VIM Avia, Tatarstan, and Yakutia will not be able to operate their New Year flight schemes to Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Italy, or Spain because of the ban imposed by Rosaviation on their Europe-bound flights. Transaero was also denied the permission to operate flights to Italy,’ the Association says.

AVS Group announced that their Manhattan Business Center in downtown Yekaterinburg would only be commissioned next year instead of this one. The construction started in May 2007, and the commissioning deadlines have already been shifted a few times. For one, the commissioning date was first set for the end of 2010, then for July 2011. The latest update so far stated that the center would start operating at the end of 2011. The developer promises this is the last time the opening has been put off till a later date. ‘Rostechnadzor committee is expected to start all the commissioning inspections

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service considered the petition placed by Integrated Energy Systems Limited (located at Panayides Building, 2nd Floor, Apt. 3, Georgiou Griva Digeni Avenue, Limassol 3030, Cyprus) regarding the purchase of a voting shareholding in TGK-9 that would give Integrated Energy Systems Limited the right to control over 25% of the company’s voting shares and would give the people involved in Integrated Energy Systems Limited the right to control over 75% of the company’s voting shares and decided to approve of it.

Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service decided to annul BNP Paribas Vostok’s license of a professional participant of the securities market for carrying out depositary activity. The decision was taken after the bank had placed an application to this extent and provided documentary proofs of having no unmet professional liabilities.

Ural Airlines, one of Russia’s top six largest air carriers in terms of passenger turnover, and Cologne Airport are launching a new direct flight from Cologne to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Flights will be operated from Cologne every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; starting June, flights will be available five times a week. All of these will be operated using the comfortable Airbus A320 planes with fully equipped business class and economy class sections. The cheapest tickets are available for ?80 for economy class and ?350 for business class (one way). The timetable has been designed so as

Once an international Architects’ Board has been set up in Academic District of Yekaterinburg, the entire city’s appeal will become much stronger. Our city has a few schools of architectural thought, which is a very good thing. However, attracting some foreign experts will definitely add some color to the city’s architecture,’ Alexander Kosintsev, who has a PhD in Economics and is a Professor at Ural State University of Economics, told UrBC. For now, an Architects’ District Council has been set up in Academic District that has well-reputed Russian and foreign architects on the board. ‘If

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the Russian residents’ demand for the U.S. dollars rose by nearly two times in October compared with September 2011. Russians bought over $1bn worth of the U.S. dollars altogether, while the net demand for the euro decreased by over two and a half times, RIA Novosti refers to the Central Bank’s report as stating. This means that the demand for the euro came to $200m in October 2011, Bank Koltso Urala reports. Experts point out that this trend has been brought about by the instability in the Eurozone: the trust in the euro has been undermined, while the

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) Board of Directors is to consider the company’s strategic development program for 2012-2016 in the course of a meeting that is expected to take place on December 14, 2011. The agenda of the meeting also covers issues related to the development of the company’s main strategic projects, the company’s annual consolidated budget for the year 2012, and the BOD action plan for the next year.

Ural Airlines will keep on transferring passengers from the military sector in 2012. The company was placed on the list of Russia’s five largest air carriers that were approved by the Defense Ministry to transfer the military, the airline’s press office reports. ‘The fact that the airline was placed on the MoD’s list proves the great quality of the services rendered by the company as well as the airline’s reliability and safety,’ the office says.

The United Nations Organization stopped cooperating with two Russian airlines on the ground that some of the companies’ employees are suspected to be involved in legal offenses of sexual nature, Reuter reports. An anonymous representative of the United Nations Department of Peace-Keeping Operations (DPKO) said to reporters off the record that the offense in question was really grave, but no further explanations were given. The DPKO representative Kieran Dwyer did confirm that the charges involved a few employees of UTair Airlines and Nefteyugansk United Airline Transportation Company that

The rolled section department of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) shipped 1,128,000 tons of hot-rolled products to customers in January-September 2011, which was nearly 50% more than in January-September 2010. ‘The increase in output was most considerable as far as Mill370 was concerned: its output rose by over two times compared with the nine months of 2010. An increase this big was made possible due to the growing consumption on the part of the building industry and thanks to the growing production output at MMK METIZ, MMK Group’s metal goods plant and the largest consumer of our

Ural Airlines is planning to get four Airbus planes in 2012, says the company’s CFO Kirill Skuratov. The company currently operates twenty-one Airbus aircraft and will add another Airbus to its fleet of vehicles on December 25. In February and November 2012, the air carrier will get two more Airbus planes leased from the Bank of Scotland. What is more, Ural Airlines is planning to buy two more aircraft next spring. ‘Our goal for mid-range haul airplanes is to get about thirty of them. We’ll have twenty-four to twenty-six planes next year and four more in 2013; from then on, we’ll concentrate

Ural Airlines was the first Russian airline to join Citibank’s bonus program recently. According to ZAO Citibank’s BOD member and Loans Director Mikhail Berner, Ural Airlines was invited to become the bank’s partner because of its business reputation, rapid growth, and market success. ‘It is a great honor for our company to become a member in a project like this,’ says the airline’s CFO Kirill Skuratov.

Acting Governor Anatoly Gredin chaired a meeting with Okuma Europe GmbH’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board and Director-General Karl-Heinz Dreyer and President and Managing Director Kaoru Aoyama and with Director-General of UMK Pumori-SIZ Alexander Balandin at Sverdlovsk Region Government House. The meeting resulted in Sverdlovsk Region Government, Germany-based Okuma Europe GmbH, Japan-based Okuma corporation, and Yekaterinburg-based UMK Pumori-SIZ signing a protocol of intent regarding the construction of a metal-cutters manufacturing plant. According to Alexander Balandin, the

Somewhere around January 10, 2012, Unilever is to come up with an offer to buy out the remaining portion of Concern Kalina’s shares. The 82% shareholding in the Russian cosmetics manufacturing company comes at the price of about 17.4bn RUR, which is approximately 700m RUR more than what was originally declared. This increase is due to a number of changes in what regards the actual cost of the transaction. Kalina’s estimated value has remained the same, namely, about 25.9bn RUR, Unilever’s press service reports. Unilever expects that the deadline for accepting the offer will come to about

The construction of the Radisson Hotel in Yekaterinburg will only begin in the summer of 2012, the Director-General of Atomstroycomplex Valery Ananyev said at a press conference today. ‘We had some difficulties getting all the permissions for the project, so some changes had to be made. The design work is expected to be completed next April, and this is when the construction will start,’ he explained. The hotel’s estimated value comes to about 6bn RUR. Radisson SAS will be located at the intersection of Malyshev St and Krasnoarmeyskaya St. The developer announced earlier that they could

Doctors say Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin is feeling better. According to the Governor’s PR Department, diagnostic examinations were carried out by the medical experts in a university clinic in Germany, and a number of rehabilitation procedures was prescribed for the executive, including the restoration of bone tissue in the fractures along his jaw line. The Governor’s wife Inna Misharina, who accompanied the patient on his trip to Germany, says the Governor felt good during the flight and was taken off the artificial lung ventilation system yesterday.