Bank24.ru came up with a special summer offer for its customers: anyone who uses their Universal loan scheme between April 16 and July 1, 2007 will be presented with a two-year Visa Instant Issue card, with no fee charged for the year-long management of the account and no entry fee. This offer is particularly appealing to those willing get the Universal loan in order to go on holiday in the summer, since Visa is an indispensable thing for travelers. Visa Instant Issue is basically modeled upon Visa Electron and can be used to pay for goods and services all over the world. The unique thing is,

'Russia’s regional office markets develop in a way that resembles that of Europe and Moscow a while ago, so I don’t think the emergence of any new trends is very likely,’ Alexander Kurochkin of Saint-Petersburg-based Management Companies and Commercial and Industrial Property Developers Guild announced at a recent press conference. 'My feeling is that the players need to interact very actively in order to understand the best way to move forward. One of the major issues, for example, is deciding on how to classify the office types. Some large Russian companies agreed upon a certain

Head of the Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog) Andrei Korolev suddenly passed away on April 18, 2007, reports Rostechnadzor’s press officer. Andrei N. Korolev was born on June 10, 1958 in Yekaterinburg. He graduated from Ural State Technical University (Department of Physics) in 1981 and was involved in political activity in 1981-1986; then he moved on to become employed at Ural Mechanic-Electrical Plant in 1986-1988 and was promoted to the director of a potassium producing company in 1998-1991. He went back to politics in 1992 and

‘We hope all the Russian travel agents manage to undergo the obligatory inspection by Rostourism and make it to the United Federal Register before June 1, 2007; as for our company, we only do business with reliable agents who are already getting all the papers ready,’ reports Olga Gulyar of Zima-Leto Travel Agency. 'We are both an agent and an operator, so we are currently drawing up all the documents as well. In case some company fails to be inspected prior to the deadline, I think the authorities could try to extend it until later, since the procedure itself is not very clear to

‘Noviy Grad’s deceived housing investors are going to support the All-Russian hunger-strike aimed at attracting attention to this problem,’ reports Chairman of Right to a Dwelling Vasiliy Ganzhin. 'Members of our NGO will picket the streets in the morning of April 21, 2007 with slogans like ‘Give us our dwellings!’ and ‘Noviy Grad is a dishonest builder,’ Mr. Ganzhin adds. 'I do hope all our authorities will finally begin handling the issue of deceived housing investors seriously as such protest marches are going to take place in many Russian cities at a time.’

The Academic construction project manager Stanislav Pridvizhkin met some executives of the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry in Yekaterinburg to discuss the construction project in question. This meeting was coordinated by the Ministry for Foreign and External Economic Relations of Sverdlovsk Region. According to Mr. Pridvizhkin, the Finnish climate is similar to that of the Urals; this is why local developers are quite interested in what Finnish architects have to offer in terms of combining unique exteriors with technological securities of buildings meant for cold climates. RENOVA

Alexander Kazantsev was appointed Commercial Director of MegaFon Ural on April 18, 2007. Mr. Kazantsev was originally employed in the capacity of the Marketing Manager of the company’s Surgut-based division in 2003 and promoted to Commercial Director in November 2006. He had worked as MegaFon Tyumen’s Regional Director prior to his new appointment.

Head of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog) Konstantin Pulikovskiy believes obsolete equipment in all branches of industry is the greatest man-caused threat facing Russia at the moment. Equipment owners are generally trying to prolong its life beyond reasonable limits, which results in accidents and human casualties, reports Rostechnadzor’s press officer in Ural Federal District. 'How does one find the golden mean that allows one to both make a profit and comply with the safety regulations? This golden mean lies in the presence of the state

United Company RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminum and alumina producer, looked at its achievements in the first quarter of 2007, shortly after RUSAL, SUAL, and Glencore merged their assets to form a new company. The company’s aluminum output rose by 2.5% compared to a year earlier and amounted to 999,415 tons. The alumina production has remained the same (2,740,168 tons), whereas the bauxite production went down 8.6% and came to 4,127,607 tons (this was due to a temporary halt in bauxite production in Guinea and Sredne-Timanskiy deposit based in Komi, Russia). 'By merging into United

A new rolled wire shop (to be controlled by American Southwire Company) is being put up at Kyshtym Copper-Electrolysis Plant (part of Russian Copper Company); the productivity of the shop is estimated to reach 100,000 tons of wire annually, reports the spokesperson for Russian Copper Company. The shop is expected to be launched in the middle of 2007, which will raise the works’ total rolled wire output to 110,000 tons a year. The project will require $25.6 million worth of investments.

Ural Airlines (one of the Urals’ largest community-oriented businesses) once again comes up with offers for the war veterans around the Victory Day, reports the carrier’s press officer. This year, the Great Patriotic War veterans and people accompanying them can get an economy class ticket for any domestic flight for free (no fuel fee is charged either). Ural Airlines strategic program that covers these free tickets is targeted at developing flexible tariff policies for the most vulnerable social strata. The program aims to make air travel affordable for passengers who can normally only

‘The decision to put limits on the import of Byelorussian sugar to Russia was taken because of substantial losses incurred by home producers for the last three years due to oversupply of Byelorussian sugar on the market. Imported sugar was almost thrice as cheap as the home-made one,’ Commercial Director of Rosbakaleya Ltd. Alexander Shevchenko said to UrBC. ‘Byelorussia’s four sugar plants appear to be overproducing, so they import almost everything they make to Russia. This sugar is tested at our customs; some samples are used for lab tests, which means there are certain additional costs

BrokerCreditService looked at the state of events in the consumer sector of Russian market of shares in January-March 2007; the shares of companies dealing in consumer goods appear to be doing much better than the stock market on the whole (the RTS index only went up .7% since the beginning of the year). A lot of such producers came up with very impressive annual reports for 2006 and drew up statements regarding their development strategies for 2007. ‘There were, however, a few sad occasions. The report produced by Kalina (RTS: KLNA), the cosmetics giant, turned out to be the first quarter’s

The average existing trade area prices (per square meter of dwelling) in Yekaterinburg went up 13.59% (from 86,043 RUR on December 28, 2006 to 97,737 RUR on March 27, 2007), reports the Analytical Department of the Ural Chamber of Real Estate. These prices went up 20.12% (from 99,211 RUR in December 2006 to 119,172 RUR in March 2007) in the downtown area (i.e. in Moskovskaya St., Chelyuskintsy St., Vostochnaya St., Dekabristy St., Belinskiy St., and Bolshakov St.). The figure rose by 27.22% (from 81,829 RUR to 104,099 RUR) in Yekaterinburg’s second most expensive residential area (Avtovokzal,

The average pay rose by 32.2% against January 2006 and now amounts to 12,009 RUR a month, First Deputy Minister for Economics and Labor Nikolai Bespamyatnikh announced at Sverdlovsk Region Cabinet meeting. ‘The region’s industrial production index went up 8.4% compared to a year earlier; so did the amount of investments (28%) that now comes to 9.5 billion RUR,’ Mr. Bespamyatnikh added. On the other hand, Ural Federal District’s law-enforcement agencies have reported more than 4,000 violations related to paying salaries since the beginning of the year. However, the disclosure of these abuses

‘Most Russian business is done in Moscow; unlike the U.S. or Europe, this country does not have any geographical evenness; there is the official capital and the so-called cultural capital (Saint Petersburg) that is trying to be like Moscow, and there are provincial markets,’ says Alexei Mogila of Moscow-based Penny Lane Realty. ‘At the moment, regional office sales markets resemble that of Moscow a few years ago: offices are being put up at a slower pace than trade centers and shopping malls, and quite often, these are the old Soviet buildings that used to host bureaucracy that are used for

URSA Bank held AGM on April 12, 2007; the meeting resulted in approval of the annual report and of the annual balance sheet as well as the profit and loss statement. The attendees also looked at the report by the inspecting committee for 2006 and agreed upon Altai Audit Consulting Ltd. as their auditor for 2007. The shareholders elected the new Board of Directors: Andrei Bekarev, Kirill Brel, Yuri Vavilov, Ruben Vardanyan (Troika Dialog’s Chairman of the Board), Gueorgui Vassilev (Clariden Leu SA CEO), Oleg Kirillov (Director of SM. CAPITAL GROUP PTY Ltd.), Alexander Taranov, Arvid Turkner

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel appointed Ivan Rabtsevich head of State Construction Surveillance Administration in Sverdlovsk Region, reports the Governor’s press officer. Mr. Rabtsevich used to be involved in military construction in the capacity of the district’s Deputy Commander-in-Chief for construction. The Governor laid special emphasis on the fact that for the first time the issue of technological monitoring was raised to the regional level, which vests the new executive with particular responsibility.

President Vladimir Putin met members of the Russian Government on April 16, 2007 to discuss the report of First Deputy Head of Government Sergey Ivanov on the agenda of the meeting of the Commission on Problems of the Defense-Industrial Complex under the Russian Federation Government to be held in Yekaterinburg on April 19, 2007, reports the spokesperson for the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region. Mr. Ivanov said the meeting would be attended by a number of governors and industrial enterprises executives and was mainly targeted at finding the ways of implementing the achievements of Russian

On Monday, Ural Airlines’ top managers received a cable from head of Rosaviation Evgeniy Bachurin regarding the anxiety the agency feels in terms of lack of understanding between the carrier and Koltsovo airport management. ‘I suggest that Koltsovo should try to host and service Ural Airlines’ flights in the summer of 2007 in compliance with the so-called historic slot schedule. The head of the local division of Rosaviation must see to this being done properly,’ the cable says. Kolstovo airport executive announced at the 4th air travel conference Urals’ Open Sky 2007 on April 13, 2007 that