Following the Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin’s order, sixty-two local mothers of large families have been awarded with the Mother’s Glory decoration. 497 women with many children have been received the three-degree decoration since 2007. This award equals the Labor Veteran in importance and gives the bearer the same rights and privileges. The spokesperson for the Governor reports the decoration is given to excellent mothers of five or more children. The first-degree decoration and a 100,000-ruble premium will be given to four mothers of ten or more children. Nine mothers of seven,

‘In the short run, things will probably stay more or less the same in the iron-and-steel industry, but a new large player will eventually emerge on the market after all. This player can already boast a great resource base. As for Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, its options of building up on their resource base will grow limited, since resources do tend to get used up,’ Unicom Partner Investment and Finance Company’s Deputy GD Dmitriy Zemerov said to an UrBC reporter. Rosnedra (the state subsoil resources watchdog) declared Mikhailovskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (part of

‘The two years Affordable Housing program has been running for have resulted in a range of problems that Sverdlovsk Region’s entire building community has to deal with somehow,’ the Union of Sverdlovsk Region Building Industry Enterprises’ CEO Yuri Chumerin said in the course of a round table discussion on Affordable Housing in Yekaterinburg. ‘First of all, the need for the prime cost of housing to go down is obvious. Secondly, we have to deal with the drawing up of new normative documents, since these haven’t been updated for a long time. Thirdly, they say the cost of housing increases due

The inspection carried out by Ural public prosecution authorities for transportation revealed that Stroicom, the developer who is currently working on Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg’s new terminal, uses some foreign workers illegally. For one, the company allegedly violates the residence regulations provided for foreign workers by the Administrative Offense Code and illegitimately involves them in labor activity, which violates Articles 18.10 and 18.15 of the Administrative Offense Code. Upon detecting the offenses, the Federal Migration Service Administration took legal action related to

European-Asian Pathways (member of MOTIV Telecommunications Group) has recently completed the construction of a regional area network in Kurgan Region and is about to start using it. The network is based on NGN (new generation network) technology that provides for transmission of any data in IP packages. NGNs make it possible for a mobile operator to offer its customers a whole range of advanced telecommunications services, the spokesperson for MOTIV reports. ‘MOTIV Telecommunications Group is working on a multi-service network within Ural Federal District and Perm Territory in order to

Rus-Bank-Ural started to officially use its new name on September, 2008. This renaming was part of the bank’s major re-branding campaign. Rus-Bank-Ural is now the official name used in bank-customer agreements, advertisements, and the bank’s internal and external correspondence. ‘The renaming did not come as a surprise for our customers,’ the bank’s press officer reports. The news was actually announced via the Central Bank’s website on August 5, 2008; the information could be found under the Bank Updates rubric. The whole thing started when Rus-Bank acquired 98.42% of Ural Treasures Bank’s

Ural Airlines’ experts came up with a report on the results of the air carrier’s activity in the first eight months of the year. The company’s press officer reports their passenger turnover rose by 21% compared to January-August 2007 and reached 1.02 million people. The carrier flew 197,600 passengers in August 2008 alone, which was 14% better than a year earlier and set the year’s record so far. The increase was the greatest among international travelers. The passenger turnover at international flights grew by 59% against January-August 2007, that at domestic flights dropped by 1%, and that

Bank 24.ru’s Saint Petersburg-based office provided a customer with the first consumer loan on September 9, 2008. This was also the day when the bank’s then only legal entity account was opened, Bank 24.ru’s corporate blog states. Both transactions were the first ones of such kind in the office’s nearly two months of work. The bank announced the opening of an outlet in Saint Petersburg on July 16, 2008.

‘The shares of Uralsvyazinform (the telecommunications provider) are very much pressed sales-wise, which is true of most Russian securities, regardless of the branch and capitalization. To bring the markets to a decent equilibrium, one has to wait till the agents go through with the options and futures transactions. The telecommunications branch has nothing to do with the current downfall of stock prices or indices. This branch has its own operation procedures, its own capital investment programs, and its own free flow of capital, all of which shape the financial outlook that matters in

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of non-state for-profit organizations’ deposits in Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank valid for 181 days to 1 year plummeted by 98.48% (from 32.9 million RUR to 500,000 RUR) in January-August 2008.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) looked into their environmental management system’s performance in the first half of 2008. The system has actually been certified for compliance with the international ISO 14001: 2004 standard requirements; the analysis of the system’s performance was aimed at enhancing its environmental efficiency. To meet the enterprise’s Environmental Policy goals in 2008, MMK’s top executives came up with the target indicators that had to be met. So, the company was able to redue the amount of harmful atmospheric emissions by 301.5 tons in the first half of 2008.

‘Uralsvyazinform’s falling stock prices have to do with the general market downfall. Besides, most telecommunication providers have recently been affected by the official statements that denied any possibility of Svyazinvest’s near privatization,’ FINAM Investment Company’s analyst Tatiana Menkova said to UrBC. The stock market has gone through another major decline recently when RTS and MICEX indices fell by 7.51% down to 1,395.11 points and by 9.08% down to 1,158.07 points, respectively. Uralsvyazinform’s shares lost more or less the most, dropping by 12.5% by the end of the day. RTS ended

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Bank24.ru to private individuals for 91 to 180 days dropped by 92.55% (from 1.745 million RUR to 130,000 RUR) in January-August 2008.

This year, Eurasian Fashion Week’s coordinators are counting on coming of fashion designers from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the People’s Republic of China, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Support Center’s official site (known as Yekaterinburg 2009) informs the readers. ‘The event coordinators believe the participants will be given a great chance to reveal their full potential both within and outside their home countries,’ the site states. Eurasian Fashion Week is actually the new version of the older (and more universally recognized) Ural Fashion Week. Yekaterinburg is to

‘Novosibirsk municipal council insists on disassembling the billboards Baltika Beer Company had installed on the roof of their production facility and next to the premises of their plant. The council believes that since these billboards bear only the company’s logo rather that the full name, the working hours and the actual address, they should be seen as advertisements rather than simple signs. This is therefore a violation of the federal advertising legislation, the council says,’ states News Outdoor, the online magazine. ‘The Federal Antimonopoly Service’s Novosibirsk Committee confirmed

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to private individuals for up to 30 days plummeted by 100% (from 38.85 million RUR to zero) in January-August 2008.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Uralprivatbank to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down by 15.55% (from 32.826 million RUR to 27.720 million RUR) in January-August 2008.

Western Union, one of the oldest money order systems there is, came up with a list of countries in the near abroad where people send money most often and offered reduced fees on them, SKB-Bank’s PR Department reports. The list includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine. Having looked into the figures, Western Union both decreased the commission it charges on a money order and took them off the list of countries of the far abroad. Kyrgyzstan was also reported to be one of the major money order receivers among the former Soviet republics. The system’s analysts even created a special

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Bank Uralfinance to non-state for-profit organizations for 31 to 90 days dropped by 70.34% (from 53.95 million RUR to 16 million RUR) in January-August 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by TagilBank to non-state for-profit organizations for 91 to 180 days went down by 91.12% (from 11.94 million RUR to 1.06 million RUR) in January-August 2008.