The Russian power suppliers keep commenting on the Russian Government’s decision to halt the growth of heating and electricity rates. The decision not to let the rates grow will affect the implementation of our investment program. We cannot produce any precise figures before the decisions as to the rates have been finalized. One could suppose that the scale of next year’s investment will be approximately the same as this year’s figures, rather than the increased ones initially planned by the company. We will have to cut back considerably on reconstructing the currently used facilities, but we

Standard & Poor's placed the Russian cosmetics manufacturer Concern Kalina’s ruA+ national scale credit rating on CreditWatch, with Positive rating outlook. The company’s rating is badly affected by the great competition on the Russian cosmetics and personal hygiene items market as well as by the relatively poor geographical diversity and its small business volume (small compared with its foreign rivals). We feel the additional risks arise from the company’s insufficient liquidity indicators, its susceptibility to currency risks, low financial flexibility, and poor free CFO

The Forbes magazine carried an article on a foreign exchange trader Alexei Kalinichenko, who is now kept in a detention ward in Yekaterinburg. According to the inquiry committee, the man set up a pyramid scheme and took advantage of over 4,000 people residing in various parts of Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Latvia, doing them a total of over 1bn RUR worth of damage. The article, entitled ‘Ural Pyramid: A Story of the Millennium’s Greatest Fraud’, mentions the viewpoint of the suspect himself, who claims he became a victim of his business partners in Russia. Alexei

The 17th Arbitration & Appeals Court rejected the claim of KESKO-Ural; the plaintiff actually contested the ruling pronounced by Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court earlier. In July 2011, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court refused to meet the claims of KESKO-Ural (the Novotel Hotel) laid against Zoom Zoom Photographers; the plaintiff insisted on being paid 223,000 RUR by the defendant. At the start, KESKO-Ural refused to pay Zoom Zoom Photographers their fee for taking a photo shoot of the Yekaterinburg-based Novotel Hotel’s interior. The photography business took the case to an

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin supported the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ application for the establishment of the Israeli Consulate-General in Yekaterinburg. In his letter to the Foreign Affairs Minister the Governor stressed that this step would promote Russia and Israel’s economic and cultural cooperation. The Consulate-General is expected to be based in Yekaterinburg and to service Kurgan Region, Sverdlovsk Region, Tyumen Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region, and Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous District. The corresponding agreement will come

The general contractor involved in the construction of Yekaterinburg-EXPO exhibition center, Rusgrad is to take its case to Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court, demanding that its customer Ural Exhibition Center be forbidden to acquire any ownership rights over the center in question. Another claim has to do with the money the customer still hasn’t paid the contractor for the job done, Rusgrad’s Director-General Stanislav Dresvyankin told the reporters in the course of a meeting with the customer’s representatives and the contractor companies. Rusgrad reports the company cannot get the money

Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service is going to ask the stock exchanges about data on the transactions involving Concern Kalina’s ordinary shares. The transactions the agency is interested in are those conducted just before the concern’s deal with Unilever was announced, a representative told Interfax. Now the news of Unilever buying the Yekaterinburg-based company was made public on October 14, 2011. The decision to investigate the possible use of some insider data regarding this Unilever/Concern Kalina deal will have to be made after a thorough examination of the data provided by the

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service declared the actions of Uniastrum Bank related to the administration of bank-managed mutual funds to be an act of unfair competition, the FAS’s press service reports. The agency detected that the bank delivered inaccurate information as to investment strategies and the ways of using them via its website and advertising materials; its investment policy statement regarding Premier bank-managed mutual funds was also misleading for both potential investors and the bank-managed mutual funds’ founders. These actions actually violate Article 14 (part 1,

Chelyabinsk Region-based enterprise Karabashmed had its shaft furnace dismantled recently. The furnaces that were in operation at one of Russia’s oldest metallurgical enterprises for over a hundred years were shut down as early as 2007, after Russian Copper Company took over the business. The large-scale renovation involved eliminating the most environmentally obsolete machinery out of the production process, which reduced the amount of harmful emissions by six times. The dismantling of the furnaces that were shut down earlier is quite symbolic, for these are the furnaces that caused the

Ural Airlines stopped using TU-154M airplanes. The last flight was operated by a plane of this type from Yamburg to Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg on Sunday, October 16, 2011, the airline’s press service reports. The company’s Director-General Sergey Skuratov said in the course of a briefing that the company stopped using TU-154M planes for economic reasons. These are the safest Russian planes, but, unfortunately, they are uneconomic. Thanks to TU-154M. we managed well during perestroika, since we could afford to operate flights abroad. These planes served as an intermediate stage of sorts

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service is going to conduct a scheduled on-site inspection of the German industrial concern Siemens’s Russian division through November 3, 2011, the FAS’s press service reports. The inspection is aimed at an all-round analysis of the company’s activity. The FAS has asked consumers to provide information on Siemens’s Russian branch violating the antimonopoly agreement by refusing to sign agreements, coordinating its distributors’ actions involving the resale of their produce, colluding with other organizations or authorities, which limits competition, setting the

A number of international experts are planning to discuss the Russian cities’ preparations for the World Cup 2018 in Yekaterinburg. The capital of the Urals will be the first city to host some Russian and foreign experts in the field of infrastructure development and sports facilities logistics on October 27-28, 2011. The experts were invited by Russia’s Transport Ministry and the Olympic Games Transportation Committee. Among the experts expected to arrive in Yekaterinburg are a professor from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, who will give a speech on the way

Sverdlovsk Region Government keeps coordinating a series of meetings with the heads of the region’s largest enterprises expected to pay some income tax to the region’s budget in 2011, the Governor’s press officer reports. Acting head of the inter-district tax inspectorate dealing with the region’s largest taxpayers Olga Shabalina says some local enterprises are now making more tax payments in general. According to Ms Shabalina, Uralmashzavod paid 10.5% more taxes in 2011 than last year, but this was due to personal income tax, as the company keeps employing more people and paying them higher

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court rejected the claim laid by Sverdlovsk Region prosecution authorities regarding declaring invalid a certain normative act, namely, the region’s law on imposing corporate property tax (subparagraphs 12 and 13), Kommersant reports. The prosecution authorities claimed that the subparagraphs in question did not comport with the certain points of Russia’s Tax Code and that they violate the existing Competition Protection Act. Now the amendments to the law were made in October 2010 and came into effect at the start of 2011. According to one of these amendments,

Russian Railwasy and STM-Service (Sinara-Transport Machines) signed a maintenance agreement involving Sinara electric locomotives produced by Sinara Group and Siemens AG joint venture called Ural Locomotives, Sinara Group’s PR Department reports. Under the terms of the agreement, STM-Service will have to provide good quality maintenance needed to keep 2ES6 locos 001-137 in good condition.

Fitch Ratings carried out a number of rating researches involving the daughter companies of the Italian bank UniCredit S.p.A. (A/Rating Watch Negative/F2) based in Central and Eastern Europe. The research was done after the bank’s long-term Issuer Default Rating (A) was placed on the Rating Watch, with Negative rating outlook. The rating agency reconsidered the rating outlook for the long-term Issuer Default Rating of UniCreditBank Russia (BBB+) from Positive to Stable. This change reflects the growing uncertainty as to the parent enterprise’s capacity to support its daughter banks in the

Koltsovo Airport filling station is going to launch a 2.6% jet fuel price increase, so the fuel will come to cost 29,150 RUR per ton, the station reports. The Yekaterinburg-based airport’s press service informed Interfax-Ural that the increase in the price of fuel has to do with the suppliers’ growing prices. Meanwhile, the price of jet fuel already went up by 4.4% on September 11, 2011.

Unilever and Concern Kalina announced that the former signed an agreement on purchasing 82% of Yekaterinburg-based concern’s shares. The price of the 82% shareholding comes to approximately 16.7 RUR (?390m). Upon the completion of the transaction, Unilever intends to make an obligatory buy-out offer to the rest of Kalina’s stockholders involving the rest of the shares not covered by the initial agreement. This will be done in accordance with the procedure and the terms set out in the current Russian legislation.

Yekaterinburg Zhelesnodorozhny District Court pronounced a verdict of guilty upon a Yekaterinburg dweller named U. who had been charged with copyright violation and five instances of illegal access to computer data. The court’s verdict was based on the evidence provided by the state prosecutor. It was determined by the court that U. used his Internet connection to copy a number of computer programs onto CDs between March 12, 2011 and March 14, 2011. The computer software in question is copyrighted by Microsoft Corporation, Corel Corporation, 1C, and Adobe Systems Incorporated. What is more,

Russia’s leading pipe manufacturer and OCTG supplier Chelyabinsk Tube-Rolling Plant came up with a performance and consolidated financial report (drawn up in accordance with the International Accounting Standards) for the six months of 2011. In the first half of the year, the plant’s steel pipes sales reached 1,012,000 tons, which exceeded the figures for the first half of 2010 (771,000 tons) by 41%. The large-diameter pipes sales rose by 91%, those of oil country tubular goods – by 16%, those of industrial weldless pipes – by 20% (against 521,000 tons, 117,000 tons, and 280,000 tons last