UrBC, Moscow, February 26, 2020. MegaFon is now Russia’s first telecom company to introduce the fifth-generation international roaming service. For those who use mobile Internet connection while traveling, this is an opportunity to compare the quality of 3G, 4G, and 5G options in action, the company’s press service reports. MegaFon partners with Orange Group, a telecom business that operates in 23 different countries. Romania was the first country where the fifth-generation international roaming service was made available, but the company is already negotiating with other partners as well.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2020. Ural Airlines will be giving the members of its Wings Club loyalty program a double bonus for flying on the airline’s domestic flights through March 15, 2020, the air carrier’s press service reports. ‘Even if you have booked your flight already, it’s not too late to join Wings Club and get your double bonus points. To do so, you need to sign up for our loyalty program on the company’s website. New members also get a welcome bonus (RUB 500) that can be used as a discount immediately, even you haven’t flown with Ural Airlines before,’ the company says.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2020. Coordination Committee for Yekaterinburg’s Strategic Development held a meeting this week, the city council’s website states. The meeting participants looked into their Yekaterinburg Trading Hubs Project. Chair of Yekaterinburg Council’s Commodity Market Committee Elena Chernysheva gave a talk on the subject. Chernysheva said the goal behind working on this strategic project was to meet the locals’ and visitors’ needs in terms of goods, services, and quality customer service, and to turn Yekaterinburg into an interregional retail trade center that

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2020. SKB-Bank Group’s DeloBank now offers a new service for the self-employed that allows private individuals to process payments from customers. According to the bank’s press service, the new service, known as Billing, is targeted at private individuals who are self-employed and sell their products or services via social networks or online marketplaces. Prior to the launch of the service, only sole traders and legal entities were able to bill their customers. ‘Starting February 2020, every customer with a private account at DeloBank/SKB-Bank who is

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2020. Sverdlovsk Region’s residents got paid RUB 40,900 a month on average in January-December 2019 (up 6.7% on one year earlier), Sverdlovskstat reports. In December 2019, their average monthly earnings amounted to RUB 50,909. Now with all the inflation adjustments in place, the factual pay rose by 2.7% in January-December 2019 against January-December 2018.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, February 26, 2020. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is going to present its produce at the construction exhibition UzBuild 2020 that opens in Tashkent today, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. ‘MMK takes part in this international event on a regular basis; UzBuild Exhibition has been around since 1998. Uzbekistan is a very special market for the company, responsible for nearly 30% of all our sales to customers in the CIS member states and 82% of our sales to customers in Central Asia. In 2019, MMK supplied some 430,000,000 kg of metal goods to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2020. NEYVA Bank has put its HQ at 3A Chapayev St (total area: 5,000 m2) up for sale; the asking price has been set at RUB 413 million. The bank’s press service informs UrBC the final decision to sell the building has been made by the bank’s management after the asset turned out to be loss-bearing in 2019, mostly because of ‘the Central Bank’s dismissing the annual estimate of the building’s value (carried out by an external contractor) and demanding that the building get re-evaluated based on the CBR’s own criteria.’ ‘Under the current accounting standards,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2020. OOO FORES’s Asbest branch coordinated an air-rifle shooting competition in Asbest on February 18-21; over a hundred FORES employees took part in the tournament, the company’s press service reports. ‘The company’s Transportation Department provided a venue for the shooting range. The competition took place during lunch breaks; contestants had to shoot from a ten-meter distance, with every participant getting to make three trial shots and five competition ones (the best results got classified as competition ones automatically),’ the company says. Among

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 26, 2020. SKB-Bank Group’s DeloBank now offers a new service for the self-employed that allows private individuals to process payments from customers. According to the bank’s press service, the new service, known as Billing, is targeted at private individuals who are self-employed and sell their products or services via social networks or online marketplaces. Prior to the launch of the service, only sole traders and legal entities were able to bill their customers. ‘Starting February 2020, every customer with a private account at DeloBank/SKB-Bank who is

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2020. The Russian Red Cross and Yekaterinburg Council extended their Guangzhou humanitarian aid event (collecting money and supplies for the people of Guangzhou) to February 28, 2020. Now Guangzhou authorities appealed to Yekaterinburg residents for help earlier, so the event took off as early as February 11. For bank details and address of the Russian Red Cross’s Sverdlovsk Region division, where money and care packages may get directed, please visit Yekaterinburg Council’s website.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2020. domofond.ru did a research comparing average monthly earnings and rental prices of studio apartments in various parts of Russia and in the country on the whole. It turns out the country’s average rental price for a studio apartment comes to RUB 14,970 a month (32% of an average monthly income), which means that, after the rent gets paid, the households have RUB 31,315 per month on average to live on. ‘People living in Magadan Region will have the largest post-rent income: RUB 83,395, with the rental prices at RUB 23,000 (22% of an average monthly

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, February 25, 2020. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) and MMK’s Lysva-based plant MMK-LMZ sold 8,300,000,000 kg of metal goods on the Russian market in 2019, up 8% on one year earlier, Head of Marketing at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works Denis Chernenko said at Russia’s Local Metal Trade Conference recently. ‘Hot-rolled metal products made up 48% of MMK and MMK-LMZ sales on the home market last year. The share of rolled section steel sales was 17%; cold-rolled products, zinc-coated rolled metal goods, and goods with polymeric coating made up 11%, 14%, and 5% of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2020. EVRAZ Holding’s Raspadskaya Coal Company’s Raspadskaya Mine completed its investment project meant to make the reinstallation of stoping equipment faster. As a result, miners at Coalface 6-6a carried out their task in a much safer manner and twice as fast, EVRAZ Holding’s PR Department reports. ‘The preparatory jobs and the reinstallation itself were done by Raspadskaya Mine’s Assembly, Disassembly, and Repair Department workers. The investment project took two years to complete. Raspadskaya Coal Company purchased an advanced set of appliances for RUB

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2020. Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant (ChelPipe Group) made RUB 9.955bn in net profit last year, which exceeded the figures for the year 2018 by 28.9%, the Group’s press service reports. The company’s sales revenues went up by 7.5% and thus amounted to RUB 192.278bn. Gross profit rose by 22.4% (up to RUB 54.191bn). Adjusted EBITDA increased by 12.8% and came to RUB 31.828bn. ‘ChelPipe Group’s financial performance improved steadily throughout the year 2019, the primary reasons for this being our adopted strategy for entering export markets and our operational

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 21, 2020. 413 entities operating without a banking license got detected within the Central Bank’s Ural division’s jurisdiction in 2019; the better part of these (over 80%) were lending money illegally, the division’s press service reports. The number of uncovered loan sharks was at its highest in Perm Territory (104), Sverdlovsk Region (90), Chelyabinsk Region (86), and Bashkortostan (52). The Bank of Russia forwarded the case files to public prosecution authorities, the Internal Affairs Ministry, the Federal Tax Service, and the Federal Antimonopoly Service for

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 21, 2020. A job with a work-from-home option pays RUB 35,000 a month on average on Yekaterinburg labor market, Avito Rabota’s research findings indicate. ‘The number of search engine queries involving teleworking rose by 12% in 2019 compared with the year 2018. The number of CVs from candidates looking for remote work rose by 9.6%, whilst the number of respective job openings dropped by 1.1%. Candidates expect to make RUB 26,000 a month on average, whereas employers generally offer around RUB 35,000 a month,’ the research states. ‘This CV/job listing dynamics in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 21, 2020. Ural Airlines will start operating a new Europe-bound flight from Moscow Region’s Zhukovsky Airport (Zhukovsky-Milan-Zhukovsky) on March 31, 2020. According to the company’s press service, the flight will get operated on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays on up-to-date Airbus liners. Departure (Zhukovsky): 11 AM Departure (Milan): 2:30 PM ‘Prices start from RUB 3,754/€54 for Zhukovsky-Milan flights; from RUB 5,646/€80 for Milan-Zhukovsky ones; and from RUB 9,400/€134 for Zhukovsky-Milan-Zhukovsky ones,’ the company says. All fees and charges are

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 21, 2020. OOO FORES’s Sukhoi Log branch has almost completed rebuilding two out of nine production lines; the upgrades will result in a much more powerful unified dust-exhaust system, the company’s press service says. ‘The number of modern sock filters at the department that hosts the reconstructed production lines will soon reach eleven. Seven filters get installed anew, in a single block that will have its own roof. In the end, the entire filtering system will grow twice as powerful as prior to the upgrades: 165,000 m3 of air per hour,’ the company says.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 21, 2020. A public council has been set up under Head of Yekaterinburg’s Leninsky Council in order to ensure discussion on the vital local issues; the council is expected to meet on a regular basis. Head of Leninsky Council Dmitri Nozhenko, Sverdlovsk Region’s Legislative Assembly Vice Chair Viktor Maslakov, Head of Leninsky Territorial Electoral Commission Irina Pyatkova, Chair of the local Veterans’ Council Elena Trubitsyna, and the housing developer RSG-Akademicheskoye’s Director-General Viktor Krivosheyin all joined the council as members and attended the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 20, 2020. Yekaterinburg Coordination Committee for Strategic Development met to discuss the Housing Safety Strategic Project, the town council’s press service says. Head of Yekaterinburg Council’s Housing & Utilities Department Alexander Bragin gave a talk. According to Bragin, they have been working on the Housing Safety Project since 2005, with a special emphasis in 2013. ‘Our key achievement is making the locals’ lives more comfortable through making sure the shared facilities in apartment buildings are safe,’ Bragin said. Bragin pointed to the housing