Due to the efforts of ChelyabEnergo experts, the electricity began to be transmitted onto the substation belonging to Katav-Ivanovskiy Foundry last night. Prior to this, the company’s workers assembled the power center and two transmission facilities from the substation to the switching device located in Katav-Ivanovsk. Thus, most of the residents of the town were able to use electricity again since midnight. Today, the municipal enterprise of Katav-Ivanovsk will provide electricity supply to two transformer substations and to the villages of Bedyarysh, Lemeza, and Verknyaya Katavka that

Magnesite Industrial Complex (part of Magnesite Group) melted its first batch of periclase from raw produce extracted in Goluboye deposit (based in Motyginskiy district of Krasnoyarsk Territory and currently developed by Magnesite Group within the framework of Strategic Development Program). Magnesite Group will have invested over 1bn RUR in the project by the end of 2009, says the PR Department of the holding. Magnesite Industrial Complex received the first 400-ton batch of raw magnesite, and the first periclase made from this magnesite was produced today. The test melting performed in

The court of Verkhnyaya Pyshma sentenced the accountant of UralTransBank Sredneuralsk subsidiary Oksana Schegolkova and her cohabitant Alexander F. to six years in prison. According to the spokesperson for the regional court, they were found guilty of fraud. Ms Schegolkova was using her access to the accounts of the bank’s clients to transfer their money onto her own account, the account of her cohabitant and some straw people in December 2004-November 2005. This did 10.870m RUR worth of damage to 148 people. The criminal case was placed with the court when the victims complained about the

The outstanding amount of loans given to private clients by Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia has gone up by over 12.8bn RUR over the ten months of 2006 and amounted to more than 50bn RUR. The bank has given over 250,000 loans worth 30.6bn RUR to private clients since the beginning of the year. Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia has also retained its leading position on the housing loan market. The increasing demand for mortgage loans is followed by the increasing amount of loans the bank gives and the increasing number of its clients. Thus, the bank provided 2,200 housing loans worth over 1bn RUR

Another seventeen offices of Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development (in Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Kirov, Ufa, Nizhniy Tagil, Ozersk, and Lesnoy) extended their working hours, says the spokesperson for the bank. ‘We realize that a lot of our customers use our services in the evening, so we have been gradually extending our working hours. For example, it’s happened quite recently in the offices located in some parts of Yekaterinburg and Nizhniy Tagil, as well as in Revda, Verkhyaya Pyshma, and Sukhoi Log,’ said the Retail Sales Managing Director Denis Babushkin.

Yekaterinburg needs 14 road interchanges worth 20bn RUR, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel announced in the course of the meeting conducted by First Deputy Head of the Russian Federation Government Dmitriy Medvedev. Mr Rossel also dwelled upon the hurdles hindering the fulfillment of national Available Housing program such as the need for a lot of negotiation and lack of money needed to build roads and flyovers and renovate the streets. 750,000 square meters of housing will have been produced in Yekaterinburg by the end of 2006, with even greater amount of housing to be put up in

Renova Stroy Group, Chelyabinsk Region Government, and RosStroy, the federal construction authority, signed a contract to build a satellite Chelyabinsk, First Deputy Governor Vladimir Dyatlov announced at today’s press conference. ‘Based on the agreement, Renova Stroy Group started looking for the contractors, and we have already got two candidates from France and England willing to take part in this project,’ Mr Dyatlov explained. ‘Some approaches and technologies that are absolutely new to Russia will be used when creating this town. We might also renew the infrastructure of the other

Evraz Group started developing Izykhgolskoye ore deposit belonging to its member Evrazruda as part of the corporate investment program aimed at supporting ore mining enterprises; the deposit is based in the Republic of Khakasia and has 11m tons of ore reserves. Most of the money needed for the project is to be invested within 2006 and 2007. The launching of some new extracting facilities is part of Evraz Group strategy targeted at enhancing the profitability of mining business and making sure ore is supplied uninterruptedly to the company’s metallurgical enterprises; all this is achieved

Vanadium Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (part of Evraz Group) conducted additional examination of how safety arrangement and precautions stated in the Collective Agreement for 2006 were observed. The examination revealed that the company provided for the manufacturing inspection of the safety requirements. Such investigations into the working conditions in the shops are carried out on regular basis, and ablutions are repaired based on a special schedule. Hot meals are available to workers 24/7. The company’s management decided to buy some new equipment to improve the working conditions

The Government of the Russian Federation and the Russian Federation Ministry of Natural Resources made Karabashmed (copper producer based in Chelyabinsk Region that belongs to Russian Copper Company) Leader of Nature-Conservative Projects in Russia. The company’s General Director Nikolai Azarov received the Order of Russia’s Environmental Shield in the course of the awarding ceremony in the Kremlin Palace, and Karabashmed itself got the honorary title after winning the competition for Leaders of Nature-Conservative Projects in Russia. The panel of the assessors included the representatives of

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank has issued 86.5m RUR worth of loans to entrepreneurs within the last three months. The Client Communication Department of the bank observed that the small and mid-scale businesses were becoming more active lately; they believe this is due to the new Small Business Loans program offered by the bank; this program provides for two schemes, Business Loan and Mini Loan, both of which are client-attractive. The peculiarity of the program consists in a simplified procedure of getting a loan based on the estimates of the real condition the potential borrower’s business is

Ural Airlines are going to conduct a presentation of Airbus 320, the Ural Region’s first European aircraft of this kind. The presentation will take place in Koltsovo Airport at 2.30 PM on November 23, 2006. The visitors will be able to have a tour of the flight deck and examine the plane that is capable of travelling, let’s say, from Yekaterinburg to any point in South-East Asia without having to be refuelled. The Russian and foreign experts will be able to answer the visitors’ questions concerning for example, the reason why Airbus 320 was the plane the majority of the world’s leading

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by Credit Ural Bank to natural persons despite overdraft account went down by 43.52% (from 1.197m RUR to 676,000 RUR) in January-September 2006.

Magnesite Group has recently started producing defined-parameters caustic magnesite for special purposes at Magnesite Industrial Complex based in Chelyabinsk Region. This made the company Russia’s first and only producer of caustic magnesite also made in China, Greece, and Spain. The total amount of the Group’s investments in R&D, renovation and upgrading of equipment, and introduction of the new technology amounted to 245m RUR. The throughput of the new facility is expected to come to 90,000 tons per annum. This kind of magnesite is mainly used by large European enterprises involved in

‘The amount of landline calls to our mobile phone users has been smoothly going up lately, just as was predicted, even though there was the initial 40% drop in public telephone network traffic due to the introduction of Calling Party Pays scheme. In October, for example, the amount of landline calls to MegaFon subscribers went up by 9% compared with September 2006. Expectedly, the amount of ‘intranet’ calls as well as that of calls from other GSM operators is increasing’, the Commercial Director of one of Russia’s largest mobile operators MegaFon Ural Andrei Ibragimov said to UrBC

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralTransBank to sole traders for a term of up to 30 days went down by 24.4% (from 44.096m RUR to 33.313m RUR) in January-October 2006.

The automated banking system of Severnaya Kazna, the local bank, was not accessible for a few hours in the morning of November 20, 2006. According to the bank’s clients who witnessed the software acting up, this breakdown made it impossible to render banking services in any of the offices of Severnaya Kazna located in Yekaterinburg; there were some delays in e-banking payments as well, and the statements of an account were unavailable. Yet the bank’s press officer claims that the bank never stopped servicing its clients and the problem was fixed by noon. The damage suffered by the bank and

‘The supply on existing home market of Yekaterinburg is going to increase by 5% to 10% in the nearest future,’ says the spokesperson for the Analytical Department of Ural Chamber of Real Estate. Their experts say that despite the increasing amount of all kinds of housing becoming available, the situation on the market is still close to fuss; yet there are some goods trends as well, for example, it is now possible to take more time (on average) to sell or buy a dwelling (the figure dropped from 35 to 40 days in the summer to 45 days in October 2006). ‘Most likely, the pace at which the prices

Rossvyaznadzor, the telecommunication authority, gave Ural Phone Company the permission to use local landlines on November 17, 2006. Prior to this, these services were only rendered by two operators (UralSvyazInform and European-Asian Pipes Ltd.) The landline operator services international and long-distance calls as well as local calls and deals in area exchange among different parts of Sverdlovsk Region.

Evraz, the Russian enterprise, is going to acquire Oregon Steel Mills Inc., the American metallurgical company, at $2.3bn. According to the report of Evraz Group, the two parties have agreed that Evraz would buy the shares of their American partner at $63.25 per share. This price covers the 22.3% premium on the average three months’ market price, or 30.3% on the average one-year’s price. Evraz Group has earlier announced that it was expecting to add some new assets to the ones it has already got in Czech Republic and Italy. Oregon Steel made $127.9m of net profit and $1.13bn worth of revenues