‘Noviy Grad (the local developer) illegally pulled down an important historic building (a merchant’s house at 72 Khokhryakov St.) a while ago and put up a multi-storey apartment building on the site. The authorities are now thinking of the best way out and of where this architecturally valuable exhibit should be restored. One obviously cannot use the original site since the developer is still constructing the new building using natural persons’ investments,’ reports Konstantin Bruner of Affordable Housing NGO. Ural State Economic University was given a land allotment near the site by the

Uralmashzavod (part of United Machine Building Works (aka OMZ, formerly United Heavy Machinery)) signed a contract regarding production of two cement mills with MordovCement on February 28, 2007. The contract is the result of a tender held in February 2007; the equipment (whose total weight is expected to come to 200 tons), designed by Uralmashzavod experts, is to be supplied in September or October 2007. The plant delivered similar machines to MordovCement in 2005-2006, and the latter has been using them successfully. The two parties are hoping to keep cooperating as MordovCement is

SverdlovEnergo now has a new General Director: former chief executive of UdmurtEnergo Mikhail Dralin will run the company beginning from March 14, 2007. The company’s former GD Vladimir Calsin will now be employed in the capacity of Deputy CEO for Service Issues of Urals and Volga Interregional Network Company.

‘Autonom has been using car loan offers from the majority of local banks. Despite the fact that these offers are, on the whole, quite similar, each particular purchase requires a certain bank for reasons of best convenience. This is why we sign agreements with these banks and our experts then explain the customers which scheme will best work for them,’ says Natalia Sedova, Lending and Insurance Director of Autonom auto show. ‘The so-called express loans that require very few papers and economy loans (with the interest rate of no more than 13% a year) enjoy the greatest demand, so we are

‘509 complaints regarding insurers of Ural Federal District were placed with the local division of Federal Surveillance Agency in 2006. 82% of all complaints are related to obligatory car insurance and, as a matter of fact, we get the same kinds of complaints every year. To start with, most insurance companies fail to pay the money on time (that is, within fifteen days). They also tend to pay less and question the damage assessment. One way to handle this problem is to have one’s car serviced at a particular garage that has a special agreement with the insurer rather than take money,’ says

‘Noviy Grad, Evropeyskoye, and Hephaestus Works Ltd are the companies that give us the better part of our hard time,’ reports Evgeniy Melnichenko, Director of Federal Licensing Center in Ural Federal District. According to Mr. Melnichenko, among their main offences are lack of managers with higher or vocational education (10%), shortage of equipment, machines, and facilities (20%), lack of regular professional training among engineers and therefore violations of quality control (20%), and violating the existing legal standards and norms (40%).

According to Kommersant newspaper, the authorities of Perm and neighboring regions are now working at attracting more large carriers, so Ural Airlines might start performing flights from Perm in the very near future. The local government decided upon this airline as well as a few others because, for one, they were unhappy with S7 Airlines (aka Siberia). CEO Ural Airlines Sergey Skuratov said the carrier intended to offer flights from Perm to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Sochi, Anapa, the countries of the CIS, and some popular overseas resorts. According to Mr. Skuratov, they are going to use Tu

‘We have four projects to present at the upcoming Cannes exhibition: the Academic construction project, a would-be urban district in the town of Berezovskiy, Yekaterinburg City, and a project known as the Guards of the Urals,’ says Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel. The Governor believes these projects will interest the foreign builders. Renova Stroy Grop that has been handling the Academic construction project decided to take part in MIPIM 2007 in order to involve the most professional developers and the largest investors in their program; this concerns both dwellings and

The public prosecution authorities of Ural Federal District completed the investigation of the criminal suit regarding the downfall of the bridge constructed at the intersection of Shevchenko St., Vostochnaya St., and Sovetskaya St. in Yekaterinburg on September 4, 2006, reports their press officer. The inquiry revealed that due to the negligence of the director of Blagoustroistvo Municipal Enterprise (the company that ordered the bridge to be designed and constructed), all the building and assembly jobs had been performed without a building permit and on the basis of documents that were

The bank’s balance sheet total reached 143.1 billion RUR on March 1, 2007, which is 4.1 times better that a year earlier; the company’s net wealth is now 3.4 times last year’s amount and comes to 100.8 billion RUR. This year, URSA Bank keeps cooperating with the international financial bodies, which has already led to its attracted investments growing 4.9 times compared to March 1, 2006; they reached the point of 42.3 billion RUR on March 1, 2007. The bank’s deposit portfolio went up 2.6 times against a year earlier and amounted to 37.4 billion RUR, largely due to more investments coming from

Renova Stroy Grop decided to take part in MIPIM 2007, the world’s most respectable exhibition of real estate, to be held in Cannes, France, from March 13 to March 16, 2007. The company expects to present its Academic multi-faceted area development project using a 111-square-meter stand. The Academic construction project is a future residential area in the south-west of Yekaterinburg fit for 325,000 people with over 13 million square meters of buildings (that is, 9 million square meters of dwellings and 4.2 million square meters of commercial estate). This is both Europe and Russia’s largest

The Academic construction project devoted to the future district in Yekaterinburg was presented to the executives of Britain’s largest building and consulting companies: Arup, Eversheds, Buschow Henley, PRP Architects, WYG International, Knight Frank, British Expertise, and White Young Green. All these enterprises are quite experienced in the fields of consulting, design, engineering, building, developing, and project management and have great knowledge of commercial estate, storehouses, and housing markets. The meeting of the British experts with the management of the Academic project was

A group of Ausmelt executives visited Karabashmed, Sverdlovsk Region. According to the company’s Managing Director Paul Abbot, the Ausmelt furnace that is now installed at Karabashmed is going to raise their copper output without doing any harm to the local environment. This is particularly important for a town like Karabash, and the installation of the new furnace is part of an all-round reclamation program designed for the town. ‘Karabashmed managed to bring the furnace to its full capacity breathtakingly quickly. It normally takes from three to twelve months, whereas the company was able

114 land allotments with the total area of 6,527.6 hectares were provided for housing construction in Ural Federal District in 2006. Another 3,917.8 hectares were allotted for low-rise apartment buildings, reports Petr Latyshev, Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District. Last year, the Ural banks gave their customers approximately 30.1 billion RUR worth of loans meant for buying a place (against 11.7 billion in 2005). This is 2.3 times more than the target figures agreed upon with the federal authorities (12,827,500,000 RUR). All the Russian

According to the regional statisticians, Sverdlovsk Region invested $531.4 million in foreign assets last year, which is 2.8 times greater than in 2005 and falls short of the foreign investments in the region by 38.2%. Switzerland and the United Kingdom received the lion’s share of all investments (62.5% and 31.6%, respectively). The regional companies also invested $326,000 (or .1% of all foreign investments) in the countries of the CIS, mainly in the economy of Kazakhstan ($324,000). By the end of 2006, the volume of regional investments accumulated abroad amounted to $144.4 million; the

According to InterFax, London & Regional Properties are going to put up a large hotel in Yekaterinburg as part of the company’s program targeted at creating a hotel network throughout Russia. L&RP is prepared to invest $500 million in twenty hotels in Voronezh, Samara, Saratov, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Krasnodar, Chelyabinsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Volgograd, Omsk, Ufa, Perm, and possibly Moscow. The company has already bought a land allotment in Rostov-on-Don in order to build a hotel/office center. A similar 26,000-square-meter center is currently under construction in Novosibirsk. In

According to regional statisticians, Sverdlovsk Region received $1,389,800,000 worth of foreign investments in 2006 (including those made in the national currency (6.694 million RUR)), which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 27.1%. The better part of money was invested in metallurgical industry (the figures exceed those for 2005 by 24.6%), communication (1.8 times more money was invested against a year earlier), and financial activity (this field received 8.3 times more money than in 2005). Fewer investments were made in extraction of fuel resources (10.3% less money was given compared to a

According to Chelyabinsk Region Minister of Economic development Yuri Klepov, the area received 75.7% more investments last year (the total volume of invested finances reached nearly $1.5bn), made by over 50 countries all over the world. Cyprus, with its $496.6m, or 33.9% of the total volume of finances, was by far the greatest-scale investor, followed by Switzerland (whose share amounted to $186.5m, or 12.7%) and Great Britain (whose share came to $166.9m, or 11.4%). In addition, about 100 joint ventures have been successfully operating within the region, for instance, Omya, the Austrian

‘We’ve been very pleased to hear that Ural Airlines is now offering a 70% discount on tickets to Israel. This is a unique offer that a lot of both Russian and Israeli citizens are going to use; this includes the members of our community as well. We are trying to bring some performers from Israel and keep in touch with those who relocated there; a trip is quite expensive, though, and not always affordable to all sorts of people, which is why we are particularly grateful to the carrier for this wonderful special offer,’ Alla Domnich, Director of Menorah Jewish Community Center, said to UrBC.

Beginning from March 6, 2007, a new customs declaration will have to be used for cars imported by natural persons for their own use. Experts of the Federal Customs Service say this new declaration was needed to make sure all the automobiles, including those containing unattended luggage, are properly examined by the customs officers. The car owner will now have to provide answers to 17 questions such as place of residence, passport details, car details and documents and its customs value as well as documents that prove this value. The forms used earlier did not have any requirements as to the