'Head of More Travel Company has been detained, and his case is now under investigation,’ President of Sverdlovsk Region Tourist Center Vadim Viner said to UrBC. 'According to the data I have, this company deceived 229 customers, with the total damage estimated at 4.5 million RUR,’ he added. Employees of More Travel Company, whose office was then located at 36 Malyshev St., signed agreements with customers who wanted to spend their holidays at the Black Sea (in the vicinity of Anapa) on July 7-30, 2007. The company promised to coordinate the stay as well as the trip to the seaside

According to a recent real estate market research, Yekaterinburg hotels are conventionally seen as a less attractive type of property compared with trade centers, offices, and warehouses. However, the hotel market has been on the rise thanks to the city’s status of both industrial and cultural center of the Urals. At the same time, there are currently very few nice quality rooms and premium class suites that the local hotels can offer, while most people who come to look for a room are the so-called business travelers. There are sixty-two hotels in Yekaterinburg altogether; 20% of them have

Olips paid 31,479,453 RUR worth of promissory notes on October 22, 2007. Overall, the company went through with a public offering of 389 million RUR worth of promissory notes. The spokesperson for the company reports this offering is part of their external financing project aimed at diversifying their resource base, improving on the amount of working assets, and creating a public credit record. Olips has been one of Yekaterinburg’s leading developers for over ten years now; it has so far put up and commissioned a total of 400,000 square meters of buildings, with another 650,000 square meters

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in SberInvestBank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 72.5% (from 20 million RUR to 5.5 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

According to a recent real estate market research, the supply of Yekaterinburg office space market amounts to 3,000 square meters; the share of available offices comes to less than 1%, the rent is $626 per square meter a year, and profitability reaches 9.5% to 10.5% a year. These are mainly foreign and large Russian companies that create a demand for good quality offices. In the meanwhile, there are very few available places, and it happens to be virtually impossible to rent a nice office in a building that has already been put up. Most offices are normally bought or rented as early as at the

In January-September 2007, seven fires occurred at Sverdlovsk Region Railways. The damage was estimated at 207,100 RUR. All the fires broke out in the building of a technological center in Druzhinino and on the premises of a ball-bearing plant in Bogdanovich. The fire safety inspectors examined 860 different objects, where 14,529 safety violations were revealed. As a result, 54 buildings had to stop operating and the use of 10 railway carriages, 49 Diesel locomotives, 24 electric locomotives, 78 electric trains, 40 special purpose cars and emergency vehicles, 59 lodging cars, and 14 passenger

According to a recent real estate market research, there are 18 trade centers in Yekaterinburg at the moment; their total area comes to 553,000 square meters. Two-thirds of malls can be classed as good quality ones. Corteo Fashion Mall, Pokrovskiy Passage, MEGA, Carnival Trade Center, Greenwich, Park House, and Hermes Plaza malls are generally regarded as the most professional shopping centers. The city now has more trade centers than Moscow and Saint Petersburg (224 square meters per 1,000 dwellers against 180 square meters in Moscow and 154 square meters in Saint Petersburg), while the

The Bank of Russia published some data on the amount of money that individual customers deposited in the Russian banks in 2007. The volume of deposits set up by natural persons keeps growing; Russian citizens were reported to have trusted the banks a total of 4.445 trillion RUR by August 1, 2007. «People come to realize that there is simply no point in keeping one’s money at home: it will only be devaluated because of inflation. Apart from that, keeping your savings around the house is outright dangerous. It’s good to know that our bank’s attempts to make the general public more financially

«The final version of the new rules regarding passenger air traffic has only come into force today, so it’s a bit early to speak of any results just now. It goes without saying that we’ll now be operating solely on the basis of these new regulations,’ Ural Airlines» PR Director Alexei Fomin says. According to Mr. Fomin, Ural Airlines has for a long time been using a lot of the rules that the Russian Government is introducing only now. «For one thing, we started restoring people’s lost tickets long time ago, and this is a principle that is virtually the same that has been made the law today.

The Bank of Russia’s PR Department reports that the Central Bank decided on October 19, 2007 to stop managing Joint Stock Commercial Volgo-Donskoy Investment Bank of Volgograd with the help of a provisional administration beginning from October 22, 2007. The administration was initially appointed by the Bank of Russia on August 29, 2007, but it will now have to stop operating due to withdrawal of a license allowing the holder to perform bank transactions.

Yekaterinburg had a great chance to present itself to the global community in the course of Expo Real, an international exhibition that took place in Munich on October 9, 2007. Reports were made by CFO Olips Boris Terentiev, Vice Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev, and Chief Manager of Mega Trade and Entertainment Center in Yekaterinburg. «The purpose of taking part in Expo Real was to promote our city’s commercial estate - one area where most of our projects are implemented», Mr. Terentiev said. In order to impress the attendees, Olips and RENOVA Stroy Group came up with a professional

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Tyumenenergobank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for over 3 years went down by 49.85% (from 2.006 million RUR to 1.006 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

«The average price of one square meter of housing has been more or less stable since March 2007 and it now comes to round about 65,500 RUR», Ural Chamber of Real Estate CEO Rustem Galeev said to UrBC. «Last year, the actual price of a transaction tended to be higher than the supply price, just because there were so many people willing to buy a home. The seller could afford to raise the price and even have an auction of some sort. Right now things have gone the other way around: a customer could easily get a 5% to 10% discount if they like», Mr. Galeev said. «Things will probably stay like

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in Ural Innovational Commercial Bank valid for 31 to 90 days went down by 100% (from 600,000 RUR to zero) in January-September 2007.

Avtostrada Corporation Ltd took part in the 7th Russian Roads XXI International Exhibition/Forum on October 15-18 in Astrakhan and was awarded with a special diploma for its enthusiastic participation, the company’s PR Manager Leysan Khairullina said to UrBC. The event was coordinated by Rosavtodor (the Federal Road Agency) and the municipal council of the city of Astrakhan. The exhibition/forum was partly meant as a way of celebrating the Roadman’s Day in Russia. More than one hundred Russian and foreign companies that deal in road construction and road vehicles and equipment-making attended

The Bank of Russia’s PR Department reports that the Central Bank decided on October 19, 2007 to stop managing the International Bank for Cooperation with the help of a provisional administration beginning from October 22, 2007. The administration was initially appointed by the Bank of Russia on August 15, 2007, but it will now have to stop operating due to withdrawal of a license allowing the holder to perform bank transactions.

On October 19, 2007 UralWeb, an information portal, awarded prizes to website owners whose sites were on top of the portal’s rating based on the user popularity. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development received one of the three prizes in the Finances category. The bank’s website provides its customers with information on the products and services of just one company, yet it proved to be just as popular as The Banks of Yekaterinburg and The Banks in Yekaterinburg: New Loan Formula that are universal sources of information on a whole range of banks.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of call loans given by VUZ Bank to natural persons went down by 29.54% (from 14.683 million RUR to 10.345 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was rated 16th among Russia’s top 200 largest companies featured in Capitalization-200 ranking published by the Expert magazine, MMK’s press officer reports. The company’s capitalization reached 329.1 billion RUR ($12.831bn) on August 31, 2007. This is sixteenth best result; last year, the company was rated seventeenth. As regards the Expert-400 rating that comprises Russia’s largest companies with the best sales figures, MMK was given the 19th position in 2006. This is one point up from the previous year’s results as well. Then, the company’s

«Russian stock market kept consolidating between 2,140 and 2,180 points (according to RTS). At the close of exchange on October 17, 2007, the RTS index came to 2,136.53 points, which is 1.68% less than a week earlier, the MICEX one reached 3,285.6 points, which is 1.84% less than a week earlier», SKB-Bank’s trader Alexander Sterkhov says. «Russian President Vladimir Putin says that the country’s macroeconomic development since the beginning of the year has been better than initially expected; Russia’s GDP grew by 7.7% compared to January 2007 instead of the expected 6.2%. The President also