Ural Airlines keeps expanding its Yekaterinburg-China flights network. Starting November 2, 2011, the carrier will be operating flights from Yekaterinburg to Guangzhou with a convenient connection in Novosibirsk (the wait in Tolmachevo Airport comes to two hours). The flights will be operated twice a week, every Wednesday and Saturday. The cheapest round trip tickets are available for ?599 (plus the fees). In addition to this, Ural Airlines already offers Yekaterinburg-Beijing flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) BOD Chairman Dmitri Pumpyansky and Lhoist Group BOD Chairman Baron Jean-Pierre Berghmans met Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin in Yekaterinburg. The businessmen spoke with the government official about the issues related to the development of TMK and Lhoist joint venture meant for the production of lime and related products at Yuzhno-Mikhailovsky deposit in Sverdlovsk Region. The project presented to the governor and the plans for its development were approved of by the official.

The 2nd international forum on Environmental Innovations as a Way to Success will take place in Yekaterinburg on November 16-18, 2011. Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is expected to attend the forum. The event coordinators report the forum aims to offer businesses some specific solutions that could help them enhance their efficiency and protect the environment. The agenda of the forum covers issues like A Big City’s Environment, An Industrial Enterprise’s Environment, The Environment of a Settlement, The Human Environment, and Environmental Innovations & Environmental

A cooperation agreement was signed by Chelyabinsk Region Government and Ural Airlines at the Governor’s residence. The signing was performed by Ural Airlines Director-General Sergey Skuratov and Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevitch. The agreement provides for the cooperation of the regional authorities and the air carrier in the field of international flights development in Chelyabinsk. This winter, Ural Airlines intends to launch three international flights departing from Chelyabinsk: to Vienna, Harbin, and Dubai. The cooperation agreement covers some subsidies for Vienna and

Credit Amnesty, a political party set up to protect the borrowing parties’ rights is going to launch an All-Russian protest march against Home Credit Bank on September 29, 2011. The march is known as Home Credit, Go Home! The news was announced via the party’s official website; this is actually the second time the party is about to attack ‘the banks that are going beyond the beyonds’. The first protest was targeted against Russian Standard Bank. The party’s founding congress took place in Moscow on July 10, 2011. It was decided that local representations would be set up in eighty-three

The copyright protection movements appears to have gained more strength in the Urals lately, the Director of Microsoft Russia’s Ural Macro-Region division Andrei Kinash recently told reporters. We make quite a few efforts to prevent the use of pirated software in the business sector, which is why we introduced an anonymous, free of charge hotline that businesspeople can call and consult our experts on whether they do everything right and how they can go legal,’ Kinash said. ‘We keep getting various requests from different agencies that ask as to confirm this or that piece of information. We

Avianova Airlines is going to raise the fares for nearly all of its flights dramatically; the change involves all the flights to be operated at the end of October 2011. One price of 19,900 RUR is now offered on many flights, the airline’s website states, whereas only a little while ago, prices started from only 250 RUR, Kommersant reports. At the same time, Avianova has been cancelling its scheduled flights lately. Bazel Aero that manages the airports in the south of the country announced the carrier cancelled eight scheduled weekly flights. The airline itself explains the changes have been

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) is going to take part in Pipes 2011, an international conference that will be held in Russian Research Institute of the Tube and Pipe Industries (RosNITI) in Chelyabinsk on September 26-28, 2011. This is actually the 19th time the conference has brought together the leading pipe manufacturers, the representatives of the academic community, and major pipe produce consumers from the oil and gas sector.

Rostelecom informed Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service that it had met the agency’s orders regarding its antimonopoly legislation offence and transferred 631,460 RUR to the federal budget, the FAS’s press service reports. Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service announced on July 25, 2011 that Rostelecom (represented by Uralsvyazinform) had violated Article 14 (part 1) of the Competition Protection Act. The offense consisted in Rostelecom changing the terms of the agreement for local phone call services and for access to

The rating service promoted the long-term credit rating of the Russian steel pipes manufacturer Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) from B to B+, with Stable rating outlook. The company’s national scale rating was promoted from ruA- to ruA. ‘The increase in the ratings reflects an improvement in the company’s liquidity status as well as in its operational and financial performance indicators,’ S&P reports. ‘The Stable rating outlook means that we feel TMK will still feel the positive influence of the Russian (and in particular the oil and gas machinery) market conditions that are favorable

Svyaz-Bank’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary is going to offer Ural Rubber Goods Plant a credit line with the top limit of 150m RUR. According to the bank, the money will be offered for a period of two years so that the plant can get additional working assets. Now according to the latest data available, the plant owed about 20m RUR to its long-term debtors and over 700m RUR to the short-term ones by the first quarter of 2011.

Ural Airlines is now offering special prices on tickets from Chelyabinsk to destinations in Europe. Tickets to Munich, Prague, Milan, Rome, Hannover, Dusseldorf, Sofia, Paris, Istanbul and back are now available for only ?249 (plus the fees). The flights will be operated with a connection in Vienna with Ural Airlines’ interline partner Austrian Airlines.

The representatives of the Japanese metallurgical company Mitsui visited Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (a member of ChTPZ Group). The visit was mainly aimed at sharing the two parties’ experience in the field of kaizen practices – the philosophy of continuous improvement, the Group’s press service reports. The Pervouralsk Plant and the Mitsui representatives held a meeting on the kaizen launching technology and methods, they also visited the site of the Iron Ozone 32 electric steel-smelting facility and the finishing center for the OCTG production and processing. The finishing center, launched

RBC.Rating came up with a ranking of banks with the most extensive ATM network, and it appears that 79 banks out of 100 that took part in the rating have increased the number of their ATMs since the last rating was compiled. SKB-Bank was featured among the country’s top 25 banks in terms of the number of ATMs it runs and was given the 25th position. As of July 1, 2011, the bank ran 493 automatic teller machines in Russia. Throughout the year, SKB-Bank invested in both the installation of new ATMs and the replacement of the obsolete machines with the more updated versions.

A Japanese stone garden can now be seen at Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant’s Vysota 239 department. The new ornamental addition is located on the unoccupied premises of the corrosion-resistant tube coating section, the plant’s press officer reports. The stone garden is a flat surface filled with sand, with picturesquely located stones and pink Japanese cherry trees. The position of the stones corresponds with the certain rules Zen Buddhist rules: for one, there is an odd number of them, most of the stones are horizontal and half-sunk in the sand, and they create triangular shapes together.

Sverdlovsk Region Government refuses to provide a list of residents for the special economic zone Titanium Valley. The construction will begin in 2012, so then we will have specific data regarding the Titanium Valley residents. Most of the companies will be foreign ones,’ the Economics Minister Evgeny Sofrygin announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg today. Now the Director-General of Titanium Valley Management Company Artemy Kyzlasov said earlier that the valley would house VSMPO New Technologies and two more Russian companies whose names were not disclosed. The companies in question

VUZ-Bank and UNIStream international money order system now offer their customers the opportunity to send money orders where the money can be received in any point of service in the addressee’s country of residence. The money orders can be processed in rubles, U.S. dollars, and euros. The money orders not tied to a particular addressee location are now available in 180 outlets in Ural Federal District, which comes to 55% of all such outlets in the region. Besides, over 60% of money orders handled in this district are processed through a customer’s unified card.

The Investigative Department of Ural Federal District division of Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry completed the investigation of an infamous criminal case involving Alexei Kalinichenko, who, the investigative authorities believe, deceived about 4,000 citizens of Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Latvia with the help of a pyramid scheme; the damage was estimated at over 1bn RUR altogether. The victims’ representatives now started looking into the files of the case. Alexei Kalinichenko was first heard of in 2003 when, according to the inquiry team, he and his accomplices

A visiting meeting of Gazprom took place in Chelyabinsk today; the gas company executives met the representatives of Russia’s leading metallurgical enterprises and pipe manufacturers. The Director-General of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Boris Dubrovsky attended the meeting as well. Those present at the discussion spoke about the cooperation of the strip and pipe manufacturers with Gazprom within the framework of Russia’s natural gas transportation system development program. For one, these Russian companies are expected to join Gazprom’s international projects like the

The stockholders of Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg decided in the course of an extraordinary general meeting to terminate the authority of the current Board of Directors before the end of the term and to re-elect the new BOD. The company reports nine BOD members were elected: Evgeny Olkhovik, Alexander Polikarpov, Nikolai Ulyanov, Evgeny Chudnovsky, Andrei Shtorkh, Vitaly Nedelsky, Gennady Marenkov, A. Yeganyan, and Yu. Surkov. The candidates Mikhail Shilimanov and Sergey Filippov did not get enough votes to be elected on the Board.