UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. 37,195 people registered with Sverdlovsk Region’s employment agencies as officially out of jobs between January 1 and March 9, 2016; this exceeded the figures for late December by 9.6%, Head of Sverdlovsk Region Labor & Employment Department Dmitri Antonov said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘The increase has to do with seasonal factors as well as the economic downfall. One year earlier, for example, unemployment was up by 16%,’ Antonov said. According to Antonov, 1,396 people are expected to be made redundant in the near future, and over

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. The number of applications from customers wishing to receive their pay onto the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s account doubled last year, the bank’s press service reports. Some 6,000 applications were submitted to the bank in 2015 altogether. According to head of the UBRD Plastic Card Department Alexei Piskunov, quite a few customers started applying for a bank card account after the so-called ‘pay slavery’ regulation (when you could only get paid into the account in a bank chosen by your employer) was lifted on November 5, 2014. ‘We

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. Ural Airlines are now offering a daily scheduled flight from Moscow to Tomsk and back, the air carrier’s press service reports. Starting from April 15, the company’s Moscow-Tomsk flight will be operated daily at 10:30 PM, with the return flight departing at 6:30 AM; this means a business trip to the capital can be planned without any time losses. ‘Once in the capital, travelers from Tomsk can use the company’s connecting flights to the cities of Russia and the CIS member states as well as to destinations abroad. All of Ural Airlines’ flights are operated

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. Ural Locomotives (a joint venture run by Sinara Group and Siemens) completed successfully its operational tests of 2ES7 001, an AC locomotive, at South Ural Railways in February. Sinara Group’s press service reports the loco has traveled over 13,000 km from Kartaly to Magnitogorsk to Inzer so far, with seventy trains connected to it all in all. The largest train was 8,000,000 kg big. The loco also proved very efficient at traveling up and down at steep slopes: A loco set of 7,400,000 kg went up the challenging Khalilovo-Sara slope at 50 km per hour during

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. The foundry departments of Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) are now running on natural gas rather than furnace oil, the corporation’s press service reports. Based on the company’s calculations, this is expected to result in 40m RUR in savings this year, and even more in the years to come. ‘Our Senior Engineer’s and Senior Metallurgist’s Departments did a lot of work finding contractors and getting all the necessary pipelines and ducts installed for the converted equipment and purchasing all the new appliances. For one,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 10, 2016. EVRAZ Group’s NTMK completed the first stage of retooling its coke dry-quenching plant, the company press service reports. ‘This is the first time such technological solutions are being used in Russia or the CIS member states. The new technology will increase our recycling coefficient, improve the quality of coke we use at our blast-furnace departments, and make the entire process much safer than before. Besides, the retooled unit will also reduce atmospheric emissions by 20%, which will mean less negative impact on Nizhniy Tagil’s environment,’ the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 10, 2016. Sinara Development (a member enterprise of Sinara Group) proved one of Volgograd Region’s most reliable developers in the year 2015, the Group’s press service refers to the local state construction surveillance inspectorate as determining. ‘The inspectorate’s analysis was based on the following basic criteria: getting the apartment buildings commissioned on time; complying with the government regulations on contracts with private customers and the use of these customers’ funds for participatory share lending projects; directing the said funds to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 10, 2016. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development has been featured in banki.ru’s People’s Top 30 Rating for the first time this year, the company press service reports. The People’s Rating gets updated daily based on the portal users’ feedback relating to banks’ customer service. The UBRD moved from the 40th position in the rating up to the 30th in March 2016. ‘UBRD customers have left over 1,000 comments on the website so far. Every new entry gets a follow-up comment from the bank within the same or the next working day,’ the bank’s representatives

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 10, 2016. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant/ChTPZ Board of Directors came up with a list of nine candidates who can be elected on the BOD, the company press service reports. Among the candidates are current BOD Members: Board Member and Rosnano’s Deputy Chair of the Board Oleg Kisselev, ChTPZ BOD Member Andrei Komarov, ChTPZ Chair of the BOD Alexander Fedorov, ChTPZ BOD Member Oleg Seleznev, Rimera’s Director-General Vitaly Sadykov, ChTPZ Deputy DG for Legal & Corporate Issues Sergei Yankovsky, ChTPZ BOD Economic Control & Administration Strategy Director Dina

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 10, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Director-General Oleg Sienko has recently been awarded for his contribution to the development of the Russian industry and the Russian transport sector and his proactive social and political efforts, the company press service reports. ‘Chair of the Russian Engineering Union and RosTech Corporation’s Director-General Sergei Chemezov awarded Oleg Sienko with an honorary certificate and the Russian State Duma Medal for his proactive social and economic efforts,’ the press service says. Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 9, 2016. Russian Copper Company offered its financial and organizational support in coordination of The Archangel Michael Cup, an international shooting tournament in Yekaterinburg, the company press service reports. For one, the company covers all the catering services for contestants and guests as well as the show on the closing day of the event’s first stage. This first stage of the tournament will be over in November 2016 and will involve over two hundred sports players from twenty-six different parts of Russia as well as Spain, Moldavia, and the Czech Republic.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 9, 2016. SKB-Bank’s Deputy Chair of the Board Margarita Burbik got on Russia’s 40 Most Successful Women Bankers List, according to Sravnivai.ru, the bank’s press service reports. ‘SKB-Bank congratulates Ms Burbik and all the other women on the list on this well-deserved acknowledgement and on International Women’s Day!’ the press service says. The rating was based on the Chairs’ and Deputy Chairs’ official biographical information (available on their respective banks’ websites) and only included executives from banks which made profit last year (according to the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 9, 2016. The amount of wages and salaries Sverdlovsk Region’s employers delayed paying to their workers reached 14.914m RUR on February 1, 2015, Rosstat reports. One year earlier (in February 2014) the arrears of wages were estimated at 3.771m RUR, four times less than the 2015 figure.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 9, 2016. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development came first in the rating of Sverdlovsk Region’s most profitable banks, their press service refers to the analytical agency Expert as stating. The bank’s profit amounted to 2.67bn RUR on January 1, 2016, which was 656m RUR more than one year earlier. The company’s assets stood at 360.5bn RUR at the start of the year, which was 32% more than in the preceding year, while its own funds reached 29.09bn RUR (+9% on a year earlier).

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 9, 2016. Kamensk Uralsky Foundry Plant/KULZ (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) held a trade union conference recently, the company press service reports. Chair of the plant’s trade union Alexandra Vinogradova presented her report. She stressed that the organization’s main focus was on the protection of the workers’ social and labor rights, control over timely payment of wages and salaries, inflation adjustment of pay and other pay raises, the application of labor legislation, labor protection, healthcare, and coordination of cultural, sports, and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 9, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant is launching the automated production planning system Omega, the company press service reports. The system, developed by Minsk-based Omega Production, is called to replace the plant’s current planning system that was customized specifically for mass production. Omega is based on up-to-date methods, approaches, and production planning and management mechanisms as well as a unified database of legal and reference information. The system already controls and keeps track of the way parts and components get transferred

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2016. 1,360 people were made redundant in Sverdlovsk Region since the start of 2016, and 1,244 more people working for eighteen different organizations are going to be let go soon, the Legislative Assembly deputy Andrei Alshevskikh refers to the Labor & Employment Department as stating. As of March 2, Yekaterinburg Champagne Factory reported 121 out of 127 workers were made redundant and Giprospetsgaz Ural made 109 out of 109 people redundant. According to the Labor & Employment Department, 770 workers out of jobs have already managed to find new

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2016. Winners of the annual Compliance 2015 Prize were awarded at the 5th annual International Compliance Association (ICA) Conference. Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) won the Compliance Leadership Prize. TMK Compliance & Foreign Economic Activity Director Vladimir Pribylovsky received the award on his company’s behalf. Compliance consists in meeting the legal, state, and regulatory bodies’ requirements as well as various standards (from quality standards to environmental to accounting ones). Compliance is also understood, in broader terms, as an

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2016. The telecommunications provider MegaFon started selling MegaFon Login 4G, a new tablet computer, MegaFon Ural’s press service reports. The device is now available at all of the provider’s local outlets as well as online. The new tablet comes for 4,990 RUR if you subscribe to Internet services. This is an Android 5.1-based gadget, with a quad-core chip to ensure smooth operation of all the apps, 1Gb worth of random access memory and 8Gb worth of internal memory (plus a 32Gb microSD slot), and a 1024*600 screen to ensure best viewing of HD videos. The tablet

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2016. D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak Nizhniy Tagil Drama Theater is now working on the production of We, the Undersigned, a play by Alexander Gelman, and getting ready for the Bulat Okudzhava Theater Festival. Both events, scheduled for April 22-24, 2016, are meant to celebrate Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s 80th anniversary. According to the company press service, the first night of We, the Undersigned is expected to become the three-day festival’s key feature. These are not only the Nizhniy Tagil Drama Theater actors who are starring in the play but also the nationally