Yekaterinburg was only given the 49th position in the rating of Russian cities with the happiest residents, whereas the capital of a neighboring region Tyumen was one of the top 10, RBC daily reports. The monitoring agency NewsEffector conducted a research on the happiness levels of people living in the Russian Federation constituencies. The research findings indicate that the happiness index for cities with a population of over one million people is not so great after all. Saint Petersburg, for one, was only given the 16th position, Yekaterinburg was given the 49th position, and Novosibirsk

Russian Copper Company (RMK) presented schoolbags to 200 first-graders of Karabash. On Friday, August 31, the Knowledge Day took off in Karabash with a play called the Punch Carnival. ‘Our online art school Karabash_ka has been operating for a year now; this is a project by Russian Copper Company that the schoolchildren of Karabash take a very active part in. This summer, Respect, a children’s theater, was opened in town, and Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and Moscow’s best teachers are now training children in the ABCs of drama. We will keep doing our best to create the most creativity- and

The Russian Student Union’s complaints regarding Ural Federal University are ungrounded, UFU Rector Viktor Koksharov said at a press conference today. ‘No applicants or students submitted any complaints at the end of our enrollment campaign. No claims were placed with the public prosecution authorities, either. I believe the Russian Student Union simply misunderstood our enrollment rules, there was some interpretation mistake involved,’ Koksharov said. Now the Educational Services Consumers’ Rights Protection Society and the Russian Student Union found a number of violations in the 2012

Passenger car sales rose by 21% in Yekaterinburg in the first half of the year. At the same time, the sales of certain brands are actually on the decrease, Auto-Dealer-Yekaterinburg, an analytical agency, reports. According to their data, 56,365 new passenger cars were sold in Yekaterinburg in January-July 2012, which was 21%, or 9,801 cars, better than a year earlier. In July, 8,924 cars were sold in the city, which was 23%, or 1,654 cars, more than in July 2011. The agency’s press release states that even though Lada is definitely the best-selling make on Yekaterinburg market, this brand’s

Seversky Pipe Plant (a member of Pipe Metallurgical Company) coordinated a charity auction for kids whose parents can’t afford to get them all the things needed to start a school year. The auction was coordinated by the Women’s Council of the plant’s trade union, with some support from the company’s press service. Among the lots put up to auction were pictures from the photo exhibition dedicated to the Metallurgist’s Day, crafts by the plant’s female workers and pre-schoolers, and fruit and vegetables grown by the workers. The production departments’ trade union committees, heads of the

The bonds of Kamensk-Uralsky-based METCOMBANK (Series 01) were placed on MICEX’s A1 quotation list. ‘The fact that the bonds are now on the top quotation list will draw more attention to the bank’s securities and will allow us to considerably expand the number of our investors, including non-state retirement funds and insurers. The increased demand for our bonds will, in its turn, increase the securities’ liquidity,’ says METCOMBANK Chairman of the Supervisory Board Dmitri Torbenko. The IPO of the 2bn-RUR bond issue took place on April 12, 2012. The bank launched its 3-year bonds through

A school of Skolkovo Network might be introduced in Academic District of Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Region Education Minister Yuri Biktuganov says. Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev approved of Yekaterinburg-based Coryphaeus Gymnasium 210’s experience in the field of introducing new educational standards during an All-Russian video conference dedicated to schools getting ready for the new academic year. On August 29, Governor Evgeny Kuivashev took part in the conference as well. Coryphaeus’s experience makes one consider the concept of a Skolkovo Network school in Sverdlovsk Region. The concept

The turnover of goods between Sverdlovsk Region and the Ukraine exceeded the pre-recession level, Sverdlovsk Region Government’s press service reports. A group of region’s delegates, headed by First Deputy Head of Government Vladimir Vlasov took part in the events dedicated to the Ukraine’s Independence Day. The agenda of the visit comprised the delegates’ meeting with Chairman of Vinnitsa Region State Administration. The trade figures exceeded those of the pre-recession era and rose from $580.8m in 2008 to $684m in 2011. Last year, Ukraine was Sverdlovsk Region’s 5th largest foreign trade

On August 23, OAO Gazprombank raised its share in VSMPO-Avisma Corporation from 7.02% to 13.2% or from 809,870 votes to 1,521,870 votes. Now on August 15, 2012, Gazprombank raised its share in the corporation’s authorized capital from 2.69% to 7.02% or from 309,870 votes to 809,870 votes, Gazprombank’s website reports.

Yekaterinburg Electrical Network Company transmitted 3.189bn kilowatt-hours worth of electric power in the seven months of 2012. A year earlier, the figure came to 3.105bn kilowatt-hours, the company’s press service reports. The increase in the amount of electric power transmitted through the company’s network was registered as early as the start of the year. Over the following seven months, the volume of transmitted electric power rose by 2.7% against the seven months of the previous year. ‘The increase in the amount of electric power supplied to consumers has to do with the dynamic

Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation completed the first stage of upgrading its unique sheet-metal press. About 40% of all the jobs have been done by now. The press is meant for making the bottom parts of all the cisterns the company produces. This machine is the only such piece of equipment in Russia, Uralvagonzavod’s press service reports. The upgrades touched upon the entire control system. The old hydraulic system has been replaced with the newly designed system with the control valves for the basic mechanisms of the press. The processes responsible for the safe

Banki.ru’s information & analytics department came up with a rating of banks based on their retail lending portfolio volume as of August 1, 2012. The rating offers data on 949 banks, most of which improved their financial performance indicators over the given period, VUZ-Bank reports. In terms of its retail lending portfolio volume, VUZ-Bank was one of the Top100 in the ranking and was given the 84th position. As of August 1, 2012, its consumer loans portfolio exceeded 6.4bn RUR. According to the data provided by the analysts, the bank’s retail portfolio rose by 3.8% in July. Now

In the first half of 2012, the Russian companies’ balance came to +3865.3bn RUR in current prices: 40,000 organizations made a profit amounting to 4571.5bn RUR, 18,000 organizations made a loss amounting to 706.2bn RUR. In the first half of 2011, the balance (for the comparable range of companies) came to +4060.8bn RUR, Rosstat reports. According to the available data, in the first half of 2012, the share of loss-making organizations went down by 3.7% against a year earlier and came to 31%. The companies’ balance rose in the agricultural sector, the fishing industry, the railway transport

Sverdlovsk Region Government is going to insist on keeping the electrolysis facilities at Bogoslovsky Smelter (BAZ), Head of Government Denis Pasler announced today. ‘Since the first day of negotiations and up to now, Sverdlovsk Region Government has insisted on keeping the electrolysis production at BAZ. In case the liquidation cannot be avoided, RUSAL management has been asked to find jobs for the aluminum production facilities personnel, and the company promised to do so. RUSAL is, after all, a large holding that works in many other directions besides aluminum. We suggest considering the

Sinara Pipe Plant, a member of Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) coordinated a professional competence contest among the company’s young foremen. This was done within the framework of a multi-faceted personnel involvement program and the Youth Project, TMK’s press service reports. The board of jurors comprised some representatives of the HR Department, the Personnel Training & Development Center, and the plant’s trade union committee. Ten finalists, all of them in the under-35 age group and winners of the department-level contests, took part in the final stage of the competition. First,

The share price of Samsung Corporation, which lost a patent case to the American company Apple in California Federal Court on Friday, August 24, decreased by 6.9% during Monday trading in Seoul, RIA Novosti reports. The court declared Samsung guilty of violating Apple’s patent rights and made the offender pay its rival $1.05bn. Samsung representatives announced earlier that they would appeal against this ruling.

The Educational Services Consumers’ Rights Protection Society found some violations of the law in the way B.N. Yeltsin Ural Federal University carried out this summer’s student enrollment campaign. The public prosecution authorities and the educational watchdog Rosobrnadzor will look into the Society’s claims, Kommersant reports. The Society’s head Viktor Panin said in his annual report that a lot of violations had been revealed on the part of colleges in the last enrollment campaign. ‘The enrollment committees admitted candidates with poor Russian State Exam scores and not those with greater

The agenda of the third day of the 7th International Russian Defense Expo 2012 opened with the awarding ceremony where Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) Scientific Production Corporation’s workers were given thank-you letters signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. 19 employees were also given Honorary Awards for their proactive position in life and for setting up the Protection of the Man of Labor Movement. The awards were given out by Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Igor Kholmanskikh, the company’s press service reports. ‘For over 70 years,

In the seven months of 2012, transport tax payments decreased by 2.8 times, or by 1,683.8m RUR and came to 944m RUR in Sverdlovsk Region. These data are available from the report provided by Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Tax Service to the region’s Legislative Assembly deputies and uploaded on deputy Andrei Alshevskikh’s blog. ‘The decrease in the payments has to do with the changes in the tax legislation relating to the deadlines set for private individuals to pay their transport taxes,’ the tax authorities report. Under the new version of the law, the Russian Federation

Sverdlovsk Region was not on the list of Russian constituencies that would get subsidies within the framework of the federal Housing Program for 2011-2015; to be more precise, the region failed to make it to the list of finalists of the sub-program on the promotion of housing construction in Russian Federation constituencies for the year 2012; this news is available via the Russian Federation Government’s website. Subsidies (nearly 2.41bn RUR altogether) will be paid to 26 Russian constituencies this year, including Tyumen Region and Chelyabinsk Region: these will receive 9.637m RUR and