Ural Airlines is going to start operating its new Yekaterinburg-Alma-Ata-Yekaterinburg flight on May 13, 2008. The decision was taken after Sverdlovsk Region’s dwellers’ numerous requests, as people needed some direct connection between Russia and Kazakhstan badly, the spokesperson for the airline says. Even though Russia and Kazakhstan have been cultural and business partners for years, the only way to get to Kazakhstan to Yekaterinburg was, until very recently, through several connecting flights from Moscow, or by train. This year, after Ural Airlines expanded its air fleet, the flights to

Uralmashxavod is currently manufacturing some equipment for BN-800 reactor that will be installed in Beloyarskaya power station’s fourth block. This is going to be the world’s most powerful fast reactor, the spokesperson for Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation reports. Uralmashzavod is Russia’s only enterprise capable of making the parts for this BN-800 nuclear reactor’s cover. All the reactor units are expected to be delivered to the power station in December 2008, so the machinery has to be shipped from Uralmashzavod no later than April 12, 2008. The plant’s produce will be delivered by

United Company RUSAL’s engineering and construction division won the National Engineering and Project Management Prize known as EPCM Award 2007. The prize was given to the company in recognition of its achievements in the field of large investment projects implementation. The awarding ceremony was part of a special conference on investment project management, UC RUSAL’s spokesperson said to UrBC. RUSAL’s engineering and construction division was set up in 2005 to implement some construction and upgrading projects. Putting up an aluminum plant in Khakasia was one of the division’s first

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by UniCreditBank to sole traders for 91 to 180 days went down by 19.98% (from 128.385 million RUR to 102.739 million RUR) in January-February 2008.

The experts of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights and safety watchdog) inspected a number of retail toy sellers, their press officer reports. Three toys were randomly chosen for hygiene lab testing, and the results of this testing revealed that the styrol content in a tumbler toy (item number 6360) exceeded the limits imposed by the sanitary and epidemiological watchdogs; the limit was set at .002 milligrams per cubic meter, while the styrol content in the above-mentioned toy came to .006-.002 milligrams per cubic meter. These tumbler toys were made in

According to the National Managers’ League’s profitability ranking of March 18, 2008, the share price of BCS Oil Fund (BrokerCreditService Management Company) has gone down by 11.78% since the beginning of 2008.

Ural Airlines improved on its ticket delivery service by starting to deliver them daily, from 9 AM to 11 PM. If you book between 9 AM and 6 PM, your tickets will be delivered on the same day; if you book later than 6 PM, you can get the ticket the next day or any other day you like, the carrier’s press officer reports. The cost of the delivery comes to 150 RUR, regardless of how many tickets you book and what flights these tickets are for. You can pay either in cash or by credit card. Tickets can be booked at delivery can be ordered at and more information about the service is available at

Ural Treasures Bank decreased the interest rate and the incidental commission on its Express Cash loan scheme. These will be lowered by 1% on March 20-31, 2008. Besides, one won’t need any income statement, however much one would like to borrow from the bank. The other terms of credit are to remain the same.

‘We’ve come up with a new advertising framework this year, so we are going to use some new characters in our ads now,’ says SKB-Bank’s Chairman Vladimir Pukhov. ‘We are through with the old ladies we used to have in our commercials, however sad it makes us feel. The bank’s new ad strategy will rely on the Soviet-style posters,’ he notes. ‘This new campaign’s logic is quite simple: not all things were bad during the Soviet times, there were some positive moments, too, and there are plenty of people who have some sort of nostalgia for those days. Besides, some seemingly bygone elements of the

Sberbank of Russia re-introduced a freshly redecorated office in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region. The office is located at 21 Voroshilov St. Customers (mostly private individuals rather than businesses) coming to this outlet can take advantage of the whole range of quality banking services, including various loans, deposit operations, exchange of currency, operations with bank cards, money orders, payment of housing bills, and much else besides. Deputy CEO of Sberbank’s Magnitogorsk branch Yuri Emelyanov announced in the course of the solemn opening ceremony that expanding the bank’s

MOTIV, the telecommunications group, is about to launch one of its newest services known as Private Virtual Network – a sort of intranet that will provide geographically extended companies with some reliable and safe communication, MOTIV’s press officer reports. Virtual Private Network is based on the Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology that is most efficient in terms of traffic transfer compared with its existing counterparts. VPN can be flexible and multifunctional, as customers can choose among the many options of IP traffic transfer with differing service classes. The network

‘The major problem today’s economic security market is faced with is habitual stereotypes. A business normally has some economic security services to protect it. A company is used to these services, but is incapable of evaluating the quality of the job they do: the larger a business is, the more intricate the job is. To assess the services’ performance, one has to have a lot of expertise in the field,’ Oleg Borisov, the General Director of Europe-Asia, the information and consulting center, said to UrBC. ‘On the other hand, this expertise is not something that universal auditors may

United Company RUSAL bought a cathode plant in the People’s Republic of China, the company’s press officer said to UrBC. The plant’s capacity comes to 9,300 tons of cathode stacks a year at the moment, but RUSAL is hoping to raise the cathode output to 20,900 tons by 2010. This project will require more than $20m in terms of investments. The plant is situated within 600 kilometers of Beijing and was originally put up in 2001. The enterprise specializes in cathode stack production (these stacks being one of the elements of an electrolysis bath needed for aluminum production) and has become

The value of net assets of Energy – Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by 3.2% between March 14, 2008 and March 17, 2008. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 2,964,941.13 RUR on March 14, 2008 to 2,870,044.53 RUR on March 17, 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank to state-run for-profit organizations despite overdraft went down by 81.25% (from 54.608 million RUR to 10.239 million RUR) between January 1, 2008 and February 1, 2008.

MegaFon Ural was the first of the Urals’ three leading mobile operators to decrease the cost of mobile Internet connection by 43%. In addition, the company launched a number of new offers like Internet 250 MB and Internet 1,500 MB for active users and 1,000 Text Messages for those who enjoy texting. If you buy big portions of traffic, it costs you much less. If you use Internet 1,500 MB, for example, you’ll only pay 1.3 RUR per megabyte (all taxes included). ‘Our flexible market policies and reacting promptly to the customers’ needs mean we can make voice communication, as well as data

Ural Airlines’ passengers traveling business class can now use a set of personal items consisting of earplugs, some warm slippers, a shoe horn, some wet wipes for leather shoes and products, and sleep goggles aboard the plane. ‘The airline keeps trying to create a cozy and homey atmosphere aboard its planes. This is particularly important for business people who have to go on trips all the time and often find themselves waking up in the sky. These are mainly the passengers who use our morning flights to Moscow that take off at 6.50 AM and 9.30 AM. We have made changes in these flights’

‘We have always preferred to settle down our conflicts peacefully, but we haven’t been able to reach any compromise with UralTransBank yet. This is why we have to go to court. We never contested our master agreement; we only said that the stop-loss proviso was a very important part of the agreement for us. Then, we declared the additional agreement on the changes in the insured event was invalid,’ says ROSNO’s Corporate Management Director Alexander Cheryarin. In the meantime, UralTransBank, having insured its financial risks related to bad debt on consumer loans with ROSNO, claims they

‘Atomstroycomplex hasn’t had to face a single threat of administrative liability since the beginning of the year, let alone liability related to a missing construction permit. We only had some minor fines last year, only one of which had to do with construction permits, and we fixed things promptly then,’ the builder’s PR Department reports. In the meantime, Ivan Rabtsevitch, head of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the state construction authority, announced at a recent press conference that the construction of 110 buildings (including 50 buildings in Yekaterinburg) had to be halted. This

United Company RUSAL has by now stopped accepting applications for its One Hundred Sports Project and Green Watch Projects. The One Hundred Sports Project contest was held from January 22, 2008 to March 13, 2008, with more than 134 applicants from twenty-two different Russian and Ukrainian locations taking part in the event. Incidentally, fourteen applications came from Krasnoyarsk. The contest was targeted at developing amateur backyard sports and raising a healthy younger generation. Applicants offered projects on sports clubs, sports events and competitions, and competed for grants they