June 30, 2014. MegaFon and VimpelCom (Beeline) announced a recent improvement in their Radar/Locator services. The subscribers of the two telecommunications giants can now identify locations not only of the subscribers within their home network but also those who use the other operator’s services. Just like before, up to five phone numbers can be assigned to the service, provided that each phone number owner consents to being tracked, the company’s press service reports. Both Radar and Locator are very popular with families with children and elderly relatives, as they help keep track of where

June 30, 2014. The amount of fuel loaded into BN-800 reactor at Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Station in Yekaterinburg is now sufficient for the start of a nuclear reaction (the minimum critical mass figure has been reached), the station’s Information & PR Department reports. The final preparatory procedures and reception all the permissions from Rostechnadzor are now taking place so that the reactor could be taken to the critical state. This event, which is significant for both Russian and global nuclear industry, will occur within the next few days. The preparatory stage for the first

June 30, 2014. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) held its annual general meeting on June 27. The event was attended by shareholders and their representatives: together, they hold 96.7146% of all of the plant’s voting shares, the enterprise’s press service reports. At the meeting, the shareholders approved of the company’s annual report and annual accounting report, including the report on the financial performance in 2013; they also decided what to do in terms of profit and loss distribution based on last year’s data, and approved of the possible future deals and the scale of such deals,

June 30, 2014. The construction of Southern Semi-Ring for Yekaterinburg orbital motorway will be completed by 2018. This year, the construction of the section connecting Medny and Polevskoy Tracts will begin, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeniy Kuivashev said at his meeting with Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Igor Levitin. It is known that the construction of the first, pilot section of the orbital motorway that has linked the Yekaterinburg-Perm Tract junction and the road to the village of Medny has already been completed. In 2014, Sverdlovsk Region authorities are

Only very few business owners actually enjoy recalling the way their companies were set up. However, when they do go through with it, some quite fascinating things are revealed. President of Penetron Group Igor Chernogolov, someone whose bodacious bearing grew proverbial among the business elite in the Urals, made quite a speech to the public recently. Chernogolov developed his waterproofing construction mix business in every way one could think of; he never resorted to understatements while extolling the virtues and competitive advantages of his product and sometimes descended to overtly

June 27, 2014. Throughout the month of July, members of the airline’s Wings Club will be granted 250 extra bonus rubles per every flight segment to their member account when flying on business to Moscow and bank, Ural Airlines’ press service reports. These extra bonuses for business trip can help the cardholders save on their holiday travel. Ural Airlines operate Chelyabinsk-Moscow and Moscow-Chelyabinsk flight every day; these are operated on the comfortable Airbus A320 liners that have both the economy and the business class sections. You can join the Wings Club by applying via the

June 27, 2014. The time it takes to get a building connected to Sverdlovsk Region electric grids dropped by 1.5 months compared with the previous years, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policies Department reports. According to Sverdlovsk Region’s Deputy Minister for Energy & Communal Housing Services Igor Chikrizov, the adoption of a local bill on cases that do not require a construction permit increased the availability of the power infrastructure in comparable ways. The new rules made it unnecessary to get construction permits for small but very locally popular structures

June 27, 2014. Semi-Precious Ring of the Urals, a project for the development of an automobile tourist cluster, was selected to join the national special-purpose program on the development of external and internal tourism in 2015-2018. Within the framework of this program, the project will get 1.1bn RUR for infrastructure development, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policies Department reports. Semi-Precious Ring of the Urals is the longest tourist route in the Urals that comprises nearly all the landmarks to be found in Sverdlovsk Region. The route is 650 km long and can actually

June 27, 2014. Experts from Bank Koltso Urala report that the number of currency exchange transactions their customers perform using their bank cards increases in the summer months as usual. Customers started using their cards more often to pay for their purchases in foreign boutiques, outlets, and restaurants as early as May, and by the end of June, the volume of such transactions doubled, the bank’s press service reports. According to Bank Koltso Urala’s Commission-Based Card Services Management Director Irina Buribayeva, the variation in the number of currency exchange transactions last

June 27, 2014. Students of Ural State Mining University who came to study in Yekaterinburg from Guinea are planning to attend the night-time live broadcast of the Russia-Algeria football match in the fan zone of V.V. Mayakovsky Central Park, the university’s information department reports. There are currently 22 Guinean citizens in Mining University at the moment. It is also possible that international students from other Yekaterinburg colleges will attend the event as well. Even though the Russia-Algeria game will only start at 2AM local time, supporters, including foreigners, will have no

June 26, 2014. The US dollar exchange rate dropped to below 34 RUR per dollar and stood at 33.65 RUR last Monday. The same minimum was observed in mid-January 2014, Bank Koltso Urala reports. According to the head of the bank’s Currency Transactions Deparment Igor Nesterovitch, the ruble mainly grew stronger due to the positive news inflow (ceasefire in Ukraine’s South East, Europe’s ‘mild’ sanctions towards Russia, and recalled permission for the Russian troops to enter Ukraine) and the current fiscal period which stimulates demand for rubles. Nesterovitch feels, nevertheless, that the ruble

June 26, 2014. Visitors to and participants of the world computer programming championship ACM-ICPC 2014 that is currently being held in Yekaterinburg were attracted by an enormous chess board that was installed in the city’s main recreation area as part of the Unique Entertainment Area Project,’ the city council’s press service says. Visitors to and participants of ACM-ICPC 2014 can play chess from 10 AM to 7 PM, and everyone can have a photo of them standing next to the chess pieces taken. ‘I like this idea, and I like playing chess as well. This could become a permanent fixture, although

June 26, 2014. Visitors to and participants of the world computer programming championship ACM-ICPC 2014 had a very high opinion of how the event was organized in Yekaterinburg, Director of Luxembourg-based Artec Group Leonid Volkov told UrBC. ‘We were quite favorably impressed: the championship is very well organized, the competition was very dynamic, and, as far as I can tell, all the visitors, including those from abroad, are having a very good time. All the people I’ve spoken to – long-time contestants and team coaches from both the States and Russian cities such as Samara and Saint

June 26, 2014. The graduates of ChTPZ Group’s corporate project called the Future of White Metallurgy who were all serving their army term in the village of Gorny Shchit, Sverdlovsk Region, were discharged from the army today. 21 people served their term all in all, the company’s press service says. This unique opportunity for all the graduates of one vocational school to serve in one and the same regiment became possible thanks to efficient cooperation between the army, the business community, and the local authorities. This was a PPP where ChTPZ Group, Sverdlovsk Region Government, and

June 26, 2014. The actual time it takes to get a small or a medium enterprise registered in Sverdlovsk Region is 18 days, Sverdlovsk Region Prime Minister’s press secretary says. The local authorities keep working on reducing the registration time. An agreement has already been signed with the Social Insurance Fund relating to providing the registration information via a multi-purpose center. This means the applicant doesn’t need to wait for a notification in the mail and get these data more or less at the same time as the registration certificate, that is, when the agreement is signed with

June 25, 2014. ChTZ-Uraltrac (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is going to deliver five B10M bulldozers and two DET-400 heavy-duty diesel electrical tractors to Russia’s largest diamond manufacturer ALROSA, the corporation’s press service reports. The contract provides for the delivery of the vehicles within thirty days. The entire set of B10M bulldozers that are meant for the diamond manufacturer are ChTZ tractors with cold-weather options and with a set of customized options that were set out in the customer’s technical requirements. ‘The vehicles will be used at ore

June 25, 2014. The owners of small and medium enterprises are now opening credit lines increasingly more often. The service only used to be popular with big businesses before, Bank Koltso Urala’s press service reports. According to head of the bank’s SME Lending Department Marina Smirnova, representatives of SMEs followed in the footsteps of managers of big enterprises this year by showing a better quality approach to managing their businesses and turning to special-purpose banking products. ‘For one, we observe an interest in the opening of credit lines that make it possible to plan for

June 25, 2014. All the electric power consumers based in Sverdlovsk Region owe Oblkommunenergo State Unitary Enterprise 598,047,000 RUR altogether, the enterprise’s press service reports. Among the top non-payers are state-run organizations, Oblkommunenergo’s sales experts say. These organizations sometimes fail to pay their bills for three to seven months. Thus the accumulated debt the state-run organizations have towards 13 ‘heating constituencies’ of the power supplier comes to 7.685m RUR. Most of this debt falls onto two constituencies, Tugulym (4.414m RUR) and Kushva (3.131m RUR). Among

June 25, 2014. Russia’s Deputy Healthcare Minister Tatiana Yakovleva chaired a meeting on the construction of a medical cluster in Yekaterinburg’s Academic District. Sverdlovsk Region Prime Minister Denis Pasler, the local Healthcare Minister Arkady Belyavsky, and Rector of Ural State Medical Academy Sergey Kutepov represented the local authorities at the meeting, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policies Department reports. ‘Governor of Sverdlovsk Region and Sverdlovsk Region Government are interested in the construction of a medical cluster in Academic District. We are primarily

June 25, 2014. VUZ-Bank coordinated a large-scale (in terms of the number of visitors) and unique (in terms of format) event for its business customers last weekend. Starting from 2014, the bank has been implementing a new approach to customer service that is based on the customer club principle. Members of VUZ-Bank Club gathered together at an out-of-town resort on June 21 to get acquainted with one another, find new business partners, take part in useful workshops, and talk about the painful issues their businesses are struggling with, the bank’s press service reports. Nearly 200 sole