Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service instituted legal proceedings against OOO Autoleader-Vostok, accusing the car dealer of violating advertising laws. The division received a complaint from a private individual who claimed that the company’s website used an advertisement which violated Article 5 (part 7) of the Advertising Act, namely, the ad failed to give some essential information about the product or the terms of purchase and usage; also, the information that was present in the ad was allegedly inaccurate, and the consumers appeared to be deluded. For one, the

Standard & Poor's repots that the merger of OAO AKB Rosbank with a few Russia-based daughter enterprises of Bank Société Générale is not going to affect Rosbank’s ratings immediately. Société Générale (SocGen; A+/Stable /A-1) and Interros’s Rosbank (BB+/Negative /B; national scale rating: ruAA+) announced the news on February 18, 2010. Rosbank and Bank Société Générale Vostok (a universal bank with no rating) will merge into a single structure but will both keep their independent brands, while OOO Rusfinans Bank (a bank dealing in consumer loans with no rating) and ZAO KB DeltaCredit

The situation around Lufthansa’s Yekaterinburg-Frankfurt flight that was to have been operated on February 25, 2010 still remains unclear. The airline’s pilots went on strike and so two flights from Yekaterinburg to Frankfurt scheduled for February 23 and 25, 2010 had to be canceled. The spokesperson for Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg informed UralBusinessConsulting that the airport did not know whether the flight scheduled for February 25, 2010 would actually be operated, whereas the German carrier announced the strike would be postponed by two weeks. ‘We are not the ones to make the

An employee of Uralmashzavod is now on average forty-five years old, the enterprise’s HR Director Natalya Babilurova announced at Sverdlovsk Region Women’s Parliament Council meeting in Yekaterinburg. According to Ms Babilurova, only a thousand workers haven’t reached the age of thirty-five yet, all of which is explained by the workforce shortage. By 2012, the median age of Uralmashzavod’s employees is expected to go down to forty, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly reports.

In 2010, Russian Railways is planning to implement its restructuring program and set up Russian Railways Holding, which means, among other things, that Sverdlovsk Region Railways (the company’s subsidiary) will no longer have some if its front offices; also, its non-core activity will now be outsourced, says Sverdlovsk Region Railways’ PR Department. Sverdlovsk Region Railways insists the reorganization will not result in large-scale layoffs. The company expects to outsource its motor vehicle facilities to OOO ResourceTrans this year. In addition, Russian Railways’ local customer service

Russia might only be able to launch 71 giga-watts worth of new electricity-generating facilities by 2020 instead of the proposed 72.5 giga-watts, RIA Novosti reports. ‘According to the findings of the Energy Ministry, forty-three power generating units out of 107 proposed new units are not being constructed at the moment. This comes to 9.82 giga-watts worth of power. Seventeen units are currently at the preparation work stage, building and assembly jobs are being done at thirty-eight units, and nine units have been launched this year,’ RIA Novosti states. The Energy Ministry says such

OOO Gazpromneftfinans sold a potion of OAO Gazpromneft-Ural’s shares and now only owns 33.73% of the latter’s stock. Gazpromneftfinans used to hold 43.6% of Gazpromneft-Ural’s shares. At the same time, OOO Ural-Viktan now owns 7.9421% of Gazpromneft-Ural’s shares.

The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Russian Federation Anne Pringle and a delegation of officials from the UK Consulate General in Yekaterinburg visited OAO Uralelectromed (Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company’s asset) and met the company’s Director Vladimir Kolotushkin. This is the fifth time Anne Pringle has come to the Urals, but the Ambassador has never been to the premises of UMMC or Uralelectromed before. The British official looked at the chemical & metallurgical and the copper wire rod shops. ‘UMMC

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin met the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom to the Russian Federation Anne Pringle, who arrived in Yekaterinburg to look at the region’s socioeconomic development and to learn about the approach taken by the local authorities to counteract the global economic recession. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the UK has been one of Sverdlovsk Region’s top twenty foreign business partners over the last few years. In 2009, the two parties’ trade turnover totaled to $245.2m, which was the 13th largest figure

The e-customers of Bank24.ru have been once again faced with the bank’s poor online performance: they couldn’t perform a single transaction, as the service denied private individuals any access to the resource. The denial was explained by preventive maintenance operations, even though the bank never informed its customers about these operations beforehand. Some of the unhappy customers comment on this via E1 forum: ‘There is nothing about the preventive maintenance in the news, so this must be something done on a regular basis and under a schedule, then? I would like my bank to be

The internal rules and policy of Khanty-Mansiysk-based Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank have not been approved of by the Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation so as to counteract laundering proceeds from criminal activity and terrorist financing.

The Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) carried out an investigation and detected that the fatal accident at Kalyinskaya mine (SUBR-Stroy, Sverdlovsk Region) on January 15, 2010 had been caused by poor mine maintenance, badly organized working space, unsatisfactory arrangement of production processes, and lack of control over technological and production discipline, the spokesperson for the division reports. The fatal accident occurred at Kalyinskaya mine on January 15, 2010. The victim was a forty-five-year-old shaft man. A

Standard & Poor’s decreased Evraz Group’s rating from B+ down to B, with Stable Rating Outlook. ‘The decrease in ratings is a sign that the agency believes Evraz to be entering a period of operational weakness for the next couple of years due to the steel industry’s dramatic downfall,’ says the agency’s credit analyst Alex Herbert. S&P expects the company to remain heavily in debt (stemming from some earlier acquisitions) and to have limited cash generation. The agency feels Evraz Group’s profits and cash flow will gradually restore as the steel market slowly comes back to life.

A new out-of-furnace steel processing unit was launched at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) oxygen converter shop on February 19, 2010. MMK PR Department reports the modern hi-tech unit is part of a bigger system meant for manufacturing new, competitive products that meet all the global standards (including the requirements for pipe steel with strength index up to Х120). The launch of the unit will make it possible to use the company’s CC machine No.6 for producing at least 2 million tons of slabs a year; the slabs will then be used in thick plate production at Mill 5000. MMK and SMS

YIT, the Finnish investment and construction concern, decided to raise the authorized capital of its daughter enterprise YIT Uralstroy in Yekaterinburg. The additional issue of the company’s ordinary shares worth 921.5 million RUR has already been registered. YIT Uralstroy’s GD Fedor Voropayev reports the increase was supposed to have occurred a year ago, but was postponed because of the recession. According to the company’s official data, YIT sold 2,610 apartments in Russia last year, which was 6% less than in 2008. The number of the apartments that have just been started dropped by 81% and

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin met the dwellers of Severouralsk, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. ‘Severouralsk is important for the development of the northern parts of Sverdlovsk Region. This is actually a town with only one employer, as 90% of industrial output comes from Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) and related enterprises. The town really needs a diversification program and other businesses,’ Misharin said. The Governor particularly emphasized the importance of meeting the townspeople, who can provide him with first-hand information about the locals’

The primary stockholders of Eldorado (the consumer electronics chain store) Igor Yakovlev and the Czech PPF Group agreed to redistribute their shares in the business. According to Vedomosti, Yakovlev is to sell his 50%-minus-one-share holding to PPF Group for $100m and will get back his personal business assets Advantage Group (ADG) and RealEstateDevelopment (R.E.D.). Vedomosti reports the news was announced by several sources within PPF Group and Eldorado’s management. The Group offered Eldorado a $500m loan in the fall of 2008. The loan was secured by 51% of Cyprus-based Fasipero,

OAO VUZ-Bank (Life Financial Group) normally makes about 70% of its bad debtors go bust. The bank can let a debtor have the debts restructured only in 30% of cases, the bank’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board Andrei Zolotukhin said in the course of round table discussion on bankruptcy vs. restructuring in Yekaterinburg. ‘The banks are willing to restructure the debts, but it all depends on the debtors. The borrowing parties often claim to be ready for this, but reality proves different. This is a very common thing. So the bank needs to protect its interests and to make the business undergo

After it was requested to do so by Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the Economic News Agency has been doing research on how efficient the lobbying efforts of Russian business community, state authorities, and deputies are. The latest data were gathered in January 2010 and indicated that Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin could be declared one of Russia’s most effective lobbying agents among region’s leaders. His rating was actually much higher in January 2010 than in December 2009. The rating also featured Yuri Luzhkov, Valentina Matvienko, Roman Abramovich, Ramzan Kadyrov, and a number of