Inter RAO UES admitted to plans of leaving Enel OGK-5 before the end of 2011, RBC reports. According to the company’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board Boris Kovalchuk, the negotiations to this extent are now under way and are going smoothly so far. We have our authority because of our controlling shareholding, and Enel OGK-5 understands that the affairs cannot be left in their present state,’ Mr. Kovalchuk said. Now Enel OGK-5 runs Sredneuralskaya and Reftinskaya power stations in Sverdlovsk Region.

The rating agency Standard & Poor's reconsidered the rating outlook of Russia-based Home Credit & Finance Bank, moving it from Stable to Positive. The bank’s earlier В+/В long- and short-term credit ratings were also affirmed but then called off upon the bank’s request. Promoting the rating outlook to Positive means we expect Home Credit & Finance Bank to keep up with its sufficient operational profitability performance thanks to improved solvency and a level-headed approach to setting up reserves; we also expect it successfully to refinance its loans on the capital markets,’

About one hundred calls had been made to Chelyabinsk ambulance by 1:30 PM local time; the city had a large-scale bromine leakage today. Eight people had to be taken to hospital with suspected bromine poisoning that might have come through food sources. The rest of those who called the ambulance only asked for advice, the city council reports. Fifty liters of bromine leaked out of a carriage at Chelyabinsk-Glavny railway station at about 5:30 AM local time this morning. An unpleasant smell pervaded the city center. The local division of the Ministry of Emergencies advised the locals to stay in

Three employees of Uraldomnoremont-Yekaterinburg had to face disciplinary liability for violating the labor safety regulations at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant, which led to a gas poisoning of some workers there, Chelyabinsk Region’s public prosecution authorities report. The prosecution authorities investigated the incident involving seven workers of Korund+ and Rodnik going to hospital; the workers had contracts for the repair of blast furnace 5 at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant. The victims of the accident were busy working on the blast furnace seams and installing graphite blocks with

Rosnano now owns a 48% shareholding in Chelyabinsk Region-based Russian Quartz. Russian Quartz deals in the production of high-purity quartz concentrate. Prior to the acquisition of the shareholding, Rosnano and Kyshtym Mining (KGOK) signed an investment agreement relating to the expansion and technical upgrades of the high-purity quartz concentrate production; the concentrates are used in microelectronics, for example.

VUZ-Bank keeps expanding the range of services it can offer to the young customers and offers them ISIC student privilege cards. The bank is now ISIC’s exclusive partner in Yekaterinburg. ISIC cards will be available at the bank’s outlets as soon as this September. VUZ-Bank’s ISIC card combines a plastic pay card, a discount card, and a UNESCO-supported, globally recognized student ID. The card can be used to pay for products and services in retail outlets all over the world, the card account can be topped up any minute, one can use it to take money out of a cash machine and have one’s

Officers of Tyumen Customs have confiscated 469 counterfeit items bearing Adidas logos since the beginning of 2011. Among the fake products are usually footwear, sportswear, socks, and bags. The customs authorities act as the protectors of intellectual property in that they prevent the import of counterfeit goods across the border and carry out inspections in the customs area alongside the local police officers. Tyumen Customs and Tyumen Region policemen conduct joint raids aimed at finding counterfeit goods in Ishim, Tobolsk, and Tyumen on a weekly basis.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) came up with its environmental performance report for the first half of 2011. According to the enterprise’s PR Department, the company is now recycling considerably more industrial waste when compared with the first half of 2010 thanks to the launch and full use of slag recycling facilities. In the first half of 2010, for example, MMK recycled 4m tons of smelter, blast furnace, and waste slag, whereas in the first half of 2011, the figure came to as much as 5.76m tons (an increase of 44%). As a result, half a million tons of metal material was taken

The share of power-related expenses in the prime cost of aluminum produced at UC RUSAL Bogoslovsky smelter rose by 45% in the first half of 2011; the figure went up by 42% at the company’s Ural smelter as well due to the growing electric power fares: prices went up by 51% and 32%, respectively. The growing power expenses have to do with the energy sector reform that was conducted in the first half of this year. As a result, the expenses of all the power consumers in the Russian Federation have gone up considerably. Our company is doing its best to minimize the negative impact of growing

The House of Representatives approved of the changes in Sverdlovsk Region State Property Management Program for 2011. Acting Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Public Property Management Georgy Alekseyev explained the changes were necessary in order to set up an autonomous non-profit organization that will deal with preparing and submitting an application for Yekaterinburg’s hosting the World Universal Exhibition EXPO 2020. The organization is to receive a donation of 10,000 RUR from the region’s budget. To finance the performance of the said autonomous non-profit organization, 300m RUR is

Alfa-Bank’s Board of Directors terminated the authority of the bank’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board Rushan Khvesyuk and his first deputy Andrei Sokolov before the end of their terms. At the same time, Andrei Sokolov was elected the bank’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and Rushan Khvesyuk was elected one of the members of the Board. Vladimir Tatarchuk was elected First Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

Khanty-Mansiysky Bank increased its shareholding in Novosibirsk Commercial Municipal Bank from 75.13% to 93.76%. At the same time, Novosibirsk-based bank reports, the Director-General of Novosibirsk Commercial Municipal Bank Vladimir Zhenov and NOMOS-Bank reduced their shares in the bank from 6.37% to 1.6% and from 16.83% to 4.22%, respectively.

Ural Airlines is about to open scheduled international flights to Dubai from as many as ten Russian cities. This means the company’s flights network will now cover flights from Nizhniy Novgorod, Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, Mineralnye Vody, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Samara, Ufa, and Krasnoyarsk. In addition, there will be three rather than just two Yekaterinburg-Dubai flights a week. Now Ural Airlines is one of Russia’s first air carriers operating scheduled flights to the United Arab Emirates. The company’s first flight landed in Dubai in 1993, and the two parties’ cooperation has been building up ever

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) spent over 52m RUR on employee training programs in the first half of 2011. 6,584 employees underwent various professional development, re-training, and additional vocation programs at MMK in the six months of this year; 3,157 people out of these are workers and 3,427 people are managers, experts, and clerks. Most workers (1,649 people) attended specific courses, 790 people underwent re-training programs, 169 people attended vocational courses, 304 people went to advanced learning programs, and 245 employees obtained a second vocation,’ MMK reports.

Ural Airlines is launching a sale of plane tickets to China, the airline’s press service reports. On September 1-30, 2011, plane tickets for Yekaterinburg-Beijing flights are available at special prices: ?159 for one-way ticket and ?350 for the round trip (plus the fees). The offer is valid for flights to be operated between October 1, 2011 and December 20, 2011. Tickets for Ural Airlines flights can be bought via the air carrier’s website www.uralairlines.com as well as in the booking offices.

Stern, the only bidder, won the tender for the repair of Mercedes automobiles belonging to Sverdlovsk Region Automobile Park. The repairs tender amounts to 1.99m RUR. The charge for a rate-hour is 2,100 RUR; the winner of the tender will service a total of fifteen vehicles. In fact, Stern has already won the tender for the purchase of a luxury car for the governor of the region. At the time, only one bidder was allowed to submit an application for the auction, which is why a claim laid by the region’s public prosecution authorities is now being processed in Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration

UTair Airlines was unable to meet its stockholder obligations in full. The company explains they were unable to pay the dividends for the year 2010 to some of the shareholders whose whereabouts and bank details were unknown; last year’s dividends amounted to 69.24m RUR altogether. Thus the sum of the dividends that have remained unpaid comes to 522,190 RUR.

The BOD of E.S. Yalamov Ural Mechano-Optical Plant Production Association suggested that the enterprise’s only shareholder Rostechnologii State Corporation should distribute the profit that was not distributed earlier (33.12m RUR) in the following way: 8.71m RUR should be directed to the payment of dividends and 24.4m RUR should be left within the company.

Rosaviation prolonged Avianova’s recently expired aircraft operator license at the last minute, but the license was prolonged by only one year rather than the standard two years, Kommersant reports. Now the agency announced last week that it had some doubts as to the air carrier’s financial solvency, so the airline had to undergo a very thorough inspection. The company representative said the last bit of papers requested by Rosaviation had to be delivered just yesterday. We’ll keep on adding new aircraft to our fleet of vehicles, independently and through a leasing company. By 2012, the

Federal Antimonopoly Service’s division in Perm Territory instituted two lawsuits regarding the instances of colluding in the field of consumer lending insurance. Alfa-Bank and AlfaStrakhovaniye-Zhizn as well as ROSBANK and Sozhekap Strakhovaniye Zhizn are suspected of violating Article 11 (part 1, paragraphs 4, 5, 8) of the Competition Protection Act. The FAS division reports the banks made private individuals who applied for loans sign life and health insurance agreements with certain insurers; the insurance agreement would be valid for the entire loan term, the payment was to be made in