Moscow Federal Arbitration Court supported the rulings pronounced in courts of lower instances and thus stated that the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s decision to stop the case involving Danone Industry had been both legal and well-grounded. The news was reported by the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s press officer. Danone’s advertisements promoting Actimel (a milk-based drink) as well as the company’s website, featured images of underage children and their parents who used the product on a daily basis. Now OAO Wimm Bill Dann felt that Actimel advertisements created an impression that these

President of Sverdlovsk Region Defense Industry Enterprises Union Sergey Maksin said at a recent meeting that twenty-three out of the region’s thirty-seven defense companies obtained a full set of state orders, the Governor’s PR Department reports. Most of these enterprises have already received advance payments on these orders. At the same time, Sverdlovsk Region still owes about 343 million RUR to the local defense industry. Maksin believes one effective way to get the money is to take legal action. However, he encouraged the heads of companies to try and reach an out-of-court settlement.

Evraz Group BOD Chairman Alexander Abramov is now the citizen of the Republic of Cyprus, Cyprus Mail reports. According to the newspaper, Abramov was allegedly one of the twenty-five foreign entrepreneurs who have been granted a citizenship by the Internal Affairs Minister’s special order. Alexander Abramov is the founder and owner of Evraz Group and is estimated to be worth $6.1bn, Gazeta Ru says. Evraz owns a number of enterprises located in Sverdlovsk Region, including Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK), Vanadium ore mining and processing enterprise, and Vysokogorskiy ore mining

Mine pickers keep inspecting Fan Fan Trade & Entertainment Center in search of a bomb. Some unknown offender called the local militia station at about 10 AM on September 2, 2010 and claimed the mall had been mined. The law-enforcement officers arrived at the scene at once. All the visitors to the mall and all the employees had to leave the place; according to the latest news available, the staff are located outside and the building is being searched through.

The freight of OAO Uralasbest got stuck in the warehouses due to the lack of railway carriages. ‘We needed 10,100 carriages to transfer our cargo in June and July, so we applied for the needed amount and got everything coordinated with Sverdlovsk Region Railways. However, we were only given 4,400 carriages,’ OAO Uralasbest’s Deputy General Director Yakov Remennik said to Oblastnaya Gazeta. ‘In August, things went from bad to worse: for fifteen days, Sverdlovsk Region Railways kept delivering only 26% of the needed amount of carriages, which was why we can’t meet our contractual obligations.

Khanty-Mansiysk Customs processed 295,550 tons of cargo in January-August 2010, which fell short of the figures for January-August 2009 by 34.5%, the customs’ press officer reports. All in all, the customs points of Khanty-Mansiysk Customs processed 3,920 cargo manifests and transferred over 3.2 billion RUR to the federal budget.

UrBC, Moscow, September 1, 2010. OAO M.Video Company’s gross profit margins decreased from 26.2% in the first half of 2009 down to 25.8% in the first half of 2010, the company’s financial report (drawn up in accordance with the IAS) states. At the same time, M.Video’s net profit came to 518 million RUR in January-June 2010: this means the profits doubled over one year. This dramatic increase in net profits has to do with M.Video’s shrinking financial expenses in the first half of the year.

Sverdlovsk Region’s mortality rate was 41.8% lower in January-June 2010 compared with January-June 2009. The number of newborns went up by 2.9% in the first half of the year compared with a year earlier, whereas the number of the deceased dropped by 3.5%. These data are provided by Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal State Statistics Service. The number of people who arrived in the region in January-June 2010 exceeded the number of those who left it by 1,579 individuals. The number of newcomers who got an officially registered residence in the region rose by 0.1% in the first half of

MOTIV Telecommunications Group stopped rendering its services to subscribers who use D-AMPS-based cellular transmission on September 1, 2010. The company also shut down all the machinery that enabled the mobile operator to work with the standard in question. The services were canceled as the company’s license 32812, issued on September 1, 2005, which allowed the operator to provide D-AMPS standard-based services, expired. Now MOTIV had been providing D-AMPS (AMPS)-based telecommunications services for fourteen years prior to the shut-down.

The Board of Uralvagonzavodskiy non-state retirement fund confirmed its decision to let OAO Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Association leave the fund. At the moment, Uralvagonzavod owns 50% of the fund’s shares and is one of its co-founders, Kommersant reports. Uralvagonzavod’s Deputy General Director for Personnel Svetlana Ivanilova told the newspaper that the decision was made within the framework of an earlier agreement which allowed a number of Uralvagonzavod workers to have their retirement savings transferred to Blagosostoyaniye non-state retirement fund. Ivanilova explained

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court partially sustained the claim laid by Sberbank of Russia against Omega Group. The hearing regarding 800 million RUR the group owes the bank took place the day before. The defendants involved in the claim are several dozen wholesale and retail companies of the well-known strong drinks holding: OOO Omega Opt Trading, OOO Omega Spirits Group, OOO Agroplodimport, OOO Agrofirma Avgust, OOO Bogatyr Trading Firm, OOO RossAlliance, OOO Resta Management, OOO James, OOO Avtorskiye Restorany, Magnum strong drinks chain, and some others. Some of the defendants are

‘We are not planning to change our schedule when a new player arrives on the market. The thing is, our business concepts are different: FlyDubai is a cut-price carrier, while we are an airline that offers its passengers a whole range of services, like wholesome fresh meals during a four and half hour flight, beverages and free strong drinks, seating options, up to twenty kg of toll-free luggage, cabin luggage options, and so on,’ Ural Airlines’ press secretary Elena Spiridovitch explained to UrBC. FlyDubai, a carrier from the United Arab Emirates, announced today that Yekaterinburg was to

Ural State University is now Russia’s 8th best and the world’s 1431st university according to Webometrics rating. The rating in question is drawn up twice a year by Cybermetrics Lab under Spain’s National Research Council. The lab uses the data available from the universities’ official websites. Webometrics is believed to be the most representative college rating, as it gathers data on 20,000 universities and colleges all over the world. ‘Webometrics focuses mainly on evaluating the colleges’ scientific potential. The analysts see the websites as a database of sorts: a great number of quality

OAO MMK Group keeps implementing its energy-saving program for the year 2010. The program was adopted through order of OOO MMK Management Company’s President Viktor Rashnikov and involves a number of measures aimed at saving electric power, fuel, heat, the products of air separation, and fire-fighting, drinking, and manufacturing water. In the first half of 2010, Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) and its daughter enterprises completed thirty-four energy-saving projects and are about to finish a few more. These projects covered replacing the traditional light bulbs with energy-saving

‘In the first half of the year, Sverdlovsk Region’s government kept trying to get more budget revenues: for one, we did our best to sign more contracts on socioeconomic cooperation with the local enterprises. So far, forty-two such agreements have already been signed. In fact, we had talks with Evraz Group a little while ago. By now, the agreement with Evraz is either signed or just about to be,’ Sverdlovsk Region’s Finance Minister Konstantin Koltonyuk said at a press briefing in Yekaterinburg. ‘This is actually a standard agreement, with only minor changes appearing in each particular

ZAO Sberkarta’s stockholders decided at the general meeting that the company should go into liquidation, the joint stock company’s website states. Sberbank of Russia announced it was going to give up on Sberkarta as early as the beginning of the year. The bank’s management then said the technology involved in the manufacturing of the card did not meet the modern standards. ZAO Sberkarta was set up in October 2005 by Sberbank of Russia, the National Reserve Bank, Interregional Investment Bank (MIB), RG Leasing, and Austria-based BGS Smartcard Systems A.G. Sberkarta was expected to coordinate

OOO VIZ-Stal (part of NLMK Group) came up with a project on the technical upgrade of its waste water treatment facility. Upon the completion of the project, the plant will stop dumping waste water in the River Iset altogether. ‘The amount of waste water dumped by the plant at the moment actually fits within the maximum permissible discharge limits and comes to about 0.05% of the total amount of pollutants dumped in water bodies in Yekaterinburg. The plant currently recycles 95% of its water, whereas the average figure for the city’s industrial sites comes to only 65%. VIZ-Stal does not exceed

OAO Ural Airlines announced the launch of special price offers on tickets to Prague, Rome, Dubai, and Tel Aviv. If you buy your tickets on September 1-30, 2010, the company’s fees will come at half-price. Under the terms of this offer, the flight has to take place between November 15, 2010 and December 20, 2010 or between January 20, 2011 and February 28, 2011.

Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Markets Service completed its scheduled field check of ZAO SberInvestBank and desk audit of OAO ZapSibKomBank. The investigations revealed a number of offenses in the banks’ activity, so the companies were ordered to eliminate the legal violations and warned against repeating the offenses.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 27, 2010. The offices of Koltsovo Customs (part of Ural Customs Administration) had to file two administrative offense protocols featuring a certain citizen K. when checking Friday’s Beijing-Yekaterinburg flight. Both protocols involve charges based on Article 14.10 of the Russian Federation Administrative Offense Code (illegal use of registered trademarks/intellectual property). The woman’s luggage contained twelve tracksuits bearing Nike logos, twenty-four fake Adidas tracksuits, and six pirated Adidas backpacks, all of which was confiscated and transferred to a