Ural Federal District’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) completed its scheduled inspection of Ural Civil Aviation Plant; the main purpose of inspecting the enterprise that deals in repairs of aero-engines, units, and reducing gear was to check the plant’s compliance with the existing environmental legislation, the spokesperson for Rosprirodnadzor informed UrBC. Twelve environmental offenses were detected in the course of the inspection; the environmental officials issues eleven orders for the enterprise and drew up offense protocols that accuse the plant of

The 28th meeting of the CIS Security Service & Intelligence Agencies Council and the 9th meeting of heads of terrorist-fighting special services and law-enforcement agencies are now taking place in Yekaterinburg. The former event is to be attended by security service representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and the CIS Anti-Terrorist Center. It has been rumored that heads of the Russian Federation Intelligence Service will take part in the meeting as well.

Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities, experts from the regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog), and officers of Sverdlovsk Region State Labor Inspectorate started inspecting all of the region’s ore mining enterprises. The inspection has to do with the recent large-scale fatal accidents at Raspadskaya mine in Kemerov Region. First of all, the checks will include an evaluation of the management’s performance in terms of creating safe and healthy working conditions for the miners and other employees. Also, the

There exist no insurmountable organizational obstacles whatsoever that could prevent Ural State Technical University (USTU) and Ural State University (USU) from merging into Ural Federal University. This fact has been distinctly stated by the two colleges’ ad hoc committees whose heads met on USU’s premises recently, the spokesperson for Ural State University reports. ‘To start with, we decided to single out all the problems in all the fields of our activity. The first discussions have made it clear that some disagreements the two committees might have are related to tactics only. However,

The international rating agency raised OAO MDM Bank’s long-term Issuer Default Rating from BB- to BB. The long-term national rating was upped from A(rus) to A+(rus). Besides, Fitch took the bank off its Positive Rating Watch list and gave its long-term IDR Stable rating outlook. All these changes have meant that MDM Bank proved to be capable of coping with a serious stress of the recession without losing on asset quality or relying too heavily on its capital support. Also, the bank is evidently able to absorb its losses at the moment. ‘MDM Bank’s impressive market capitalization was the proof

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service stated that Sverdlovteplosbyt, the subsidiary of TGK-9, the regional heat and power supplier, was guilty of violating Article 10 (part 1, paragraph 5) of the Competition Protection Act, the spokesperson for the Service’s regional division reports. ‘TGK-9 actually avoided signing a power supply contract with Deka, the construction company, as it only agreed to hook the company up through another network (YekaterinburgEnergo Municipal Unitary Enterprise) and insisted on charging Deka for this kind of intermediary hookup,’ the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court rejected OAO AKB Rosbank’s demand that the ruling of Rospotrebnadzor’s Sverdlovsk Region division be declared invalid. Now the regional division of the state consumer rights watchdog stated that Rosbank had to stop violating its customers’ rights when drawing out loan agreements. The order to this extent was issued after the bank had undergone a document check; this inspection, in its turn, was carried out by Rospotrebnadzor’s experts upon a customer’s complaint. The agreement which this customer signed with the bank contained a number of terms that

UrBC found out recently that the chartered flights operated by Yamal Airlines from Yekaterinburg to Bulgaria are in danger of being called off. Apparently, the problem came up because the company’s management neglects the existing rules and only informs Rosaviation of the upcoming flight at the last possible minute. According to an official source, Yamal expects to operate fifteen chartered flights from Yekaterinburg to Burgas and a number of flights to Varna this year. These flights were ordered by Neva ad Capital Tour travel agents. At the moment, hundreds of travelers are uncertain about

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development joined Visa’s promotion campaign dubbed ‘Try It-You’ll Love It!’ this May. Under the terms of this special offer, any customer who uses their Visa-UBRD card to pay for goods and services between May 20, 2010 and December 31, 2010 gets a chance to win 3,000 RUR. One’s chances increase with every new transaction. The first prize-winners will have been determined by mid-summer 2010; the prize-drawing process will be split into four two-month stages, with intermediary prizes. 3,000 prizes will be given out altogether, with money to be transferred

Ural Federal University is currently on the look-out for a bank that could become the university’s partner in terms of cash processing. The university has encouraged the local banks to place their applications with the UFU’s Supervisory Board. The Board will have to come up with recommendations on the banks it sees most suitable for rendering the university cash processing, depositing, and other financial services as well as dealing with the obligatory medical insurance payments.

This year, the American magazine Forbes did a research on the economic situation in Russia’s thirty most populated cities (excluding Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and the cities located in the North Caucasus). The cities were ranked in accordance with their final score that depended on six indicator groups: business climate, the population’s spending power, stability during a recession, social characteristics, infrastructure, and the ease of doing business for the companies’ owners and top managers. Among the Top 10 best business cities were Krasnodar, Khabarovsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk,

Russia’ Federal Antimonopoly Service fined OOO KB Uniastrum Bank for its loan ads; the bank is now to pay two 40,000-ruble fines, FAS’s press officer reports. On February 24, 2010, the Service declared that the bank’s loan advertisements contradicted the norms prescribed in Articles 5 (part 3, paragraph 15) and 9 of the Federal Advertising Act. ‘The offense consisted in the launch of an online, bank office, and media ad campaign in March-July 2009; the advertisements promoted Uniastrum Bank credit card-based loans and a special offer that provided for a holiday in Cyprus. The advertisements

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region is planning to propose a new legislation to the federal authorities. Mikhail Yurevitch, who has been running a large city for five years, believes it would be reasonable to direct the transport tax money to the town officials so as to finance municipal improvements. At the moment, 100% of the existing transport tax money gets transferred to the Russian Federation constituencies’ budgets. Chelyabinsk Region, for one, received 858.5 million RUR last year. Now the Governor suggests that this sum should go to the local towns and cities and be invested in roads and

‘Yekaterinburg’s key problem in terms of attracting foreign investment lies in the lack of good quality projects. Most of the projects that could actually interest international investors have not been built yet. On the other hand, one can find a market niche in virtually any field here, as the quality supply is still limited. Until very recently, for example, Yekaterinburg had no five-star hotels at all. Now this niche has been taken by the Hyatt Hotel,’ Cushman & Wakefield/Stiles & Riabokobylko’s General Director and Partner Sergey Riabokobylko announced in the course of a recent

OAO Uralenergotsvetmet is not going to pay any share dividend for the year 2009. The decision to this extent was taken by the company’s stockholders during the recent AGM in Yekaterinburg.

‘As is well known, we’ve been faced with an adverse budget this year. The deficit can be compensated in two ways: through an increase in profits or through taking out loans and giving out guarantees. We can also issue bonds and securities. However, when one comes to analyze the banks’ interest rates, it becomes obvious that this rate comes to 15% to 18% a year, whereas bonds an be issued at a smaller interest and the assets can be managed more easily into the bargain,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin says. ‘We have issued nearly 10 billion RUR worth of guarantees so far. As

‘The outcome of the last heating season is not quite rosy. Customers owe 4 billion RUR to Sverdlovsk Heating Supply Company, of which 1 billion RUR constitutes current debts and 3 billion RUR constitute overdue debt,’ the company’s Executive Director Sergey Yefimov said to UrBC reporters. ‘Our key debtors are the municipalities of Pervouralsk, Krasnoturyinsk, Nizhnyaya Tura, and Kachkanar. As for Pervouralsk, Anatoly Gredin has already set up an ad hoc committee to sort out the town’s problems, and now we are looking into the ways of dealing with them. All in all, such a large debt emerged

Following the demand of the prosecutor from Yekaterinburg’s Chkalovskiy district, an entertainment club located on the 27th floor of a housing block at Ordenonostsev St. in Yekaterinburg was temporarily closed down. This particular street is actually filled with skyscrapers put up by Atomstroycomplex, the city’s major developer. It was detected in the course of an investigation that the club, which belonged to OOO Home Club, did not comply with the sanitary-and-epidemiologic regulations, consumer rights, or fire safety regulations. This was why the public prosecution authorities instituted

‘MTS submitted its revised tax declarations for 2008 in 2009; as a result, we paid a smaller property tax because our earlier years’ payments had actually been greater than necessary,’ OAO MTS Ural Macro-region’s PR expert Darya Volkhina. In the meantime, the regional government’s business support committee declared recently that the local branch of OAO VympelCommunications (Beeline) and OAO MTS were directing less money to the regional budget. ‘MTS did not make any of its Yekaterinburg branch’s employees redundant last year. Quite on the contrary, the company created over a hundred new jobs

‘OAO VympelCom’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary keeps making increasingly more profit from rendering its services to the local customers, so the tax payments directed to Sverdlovsk Region’s budget have been increasing proportionally. This was also true of the year 2009, when the company’s profits soared against the previous year’s figures. Now the decrease in payments that the government officials mentioned at their latest meeting stems from the fact that the company has used its tax relief options in accordance with the property tax legislation,’ the company’s press officer informed UrBC. The