SKB-Bank’s outlet started operating in Vladivostok, the capital of Maritime Territory. In fact, the bank’s new office in Khabarovsk was opened shortly before this. The Far Eastern office is located in downtown Vladivostok, on the shore of the Golden Horn Bay at 30 Semenovskaya St. The office welcomes customers from 10 AM to 7 PM on weekdays and from 10 AM to 4 PM on Saturdays, with no lunch breaks. ‘SKB-Bank now runs offices on the coasts of seven seas and three oceans. The Pacific, for one, will get new offices in Magadan and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the nearest future,’ the bank reports.

Igor Vorobyev is no longer the BOD Chairman of Revdinsky Non-Ferrous Metals Processing Plant. This decision was taken by the plant’s Board of Directors. Rishat Gayanov was elected the new Chairman.

Kaliningrad Region’s Minister for Industrial Policy Dmitri Chemakin did not confirm the reports that Kaliningrad Amber Combine would be registered in Sverdlovsk Region, Komsomolskaya Pravda-Kaliningrad reports. ‘Certain rumors did reach me, but no official statements have been made so far,’ the Minister said. ‘The amber combine is owned by the federal authorities, so they are to have the last word in this case. The position of the Russian Federation Finance Ministry’s has not been announced yet. I cannot imagine how the combine might not be registered with us,’ Chemakin said. Acting Governor

The analytical think tank AlfaStrakhovaniye conducted a research on the sales of new cars in Russia, and Yekaterinburg in particular, in the first nine months of 2011, and came up with a rating of the best-selling brands. In January-September 2011, 62,890 new automobiles were sold in Yekaterinburg, which was 70% more than a year earlier. The sales reached a peak in June. Lada proved the most popular brand in Yekaterinburg: 11,320 cars have been sold since the start of the year, which amounts to 18% of all the cars bought in the city over the given period. In addition, Lada’s sales in

Starting December 15, the telecommunications carrier MegaFon is to switch to the new basic rates for international roaming services in Europe, including the European part of the CIS and Turkey. The carrier launches a single Eurorate for all the Russian subscribers and charges them 6 RUR or 16 RUR per minute, depending on the destination of the call. The rates for roaming data transfer and text messages have also been reduced dramatically, the company’s press service reports. These changes in the roaming rates proved the most considerable in the last few years: the price of an incoming call

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) keeps putting up the second extension to its cold-roll facility. The facility with the capacity of 2m tons of goods a year is meant for the production of high quality cold-rolled and galvanized rolled products for the automobile industry as well as for household appliances manufacturers and for the building industry. According to MMK PR Department, over 1,400 people are employed at the construction site every day. The assembling of the technological equipment is 70% complete by now. The equipment relating to the continuous annealing aggregate is being

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 9, 2011. Ural Airlines, one of Russia’s top six largest air carriers in terms of passenger turnover, and Cologne Airport are launching a new direct flight from Cologne to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Flights will be operated from Cologne every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; starting June, flights will be available five times a week. All of these will be operated using the comfortable Airbus A320 planes with fully equipped business class and economy class sections. The cheapest tickets are available for ?80 for economy class and ?350 for business class (one way).

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 12, 2011. Ural Airlines came up with a performance report for the eleven months of 2011. Most of the air carrier’s performance figures went up impressively in comparison with a year earlier. In November 2011, the airline operated a total of 1,680 flights, which was 32% better than last November. This figure included 593 international flights, 704 domestic flights, and 387 flights around the CIS. The number of passengers who used Ural Airlines in November 2011 came to an impressive figure of 198,370, which was 72% more than in November 2010. The actual passenger

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 12, 2011. Heads of an NGO EXPO 2020 Application Committee are coming to Yekaterinburg this week. The important issues on their agenda are defining the permanent members of a working team that will promote Yekaterinburg as a candidate for hosting the Global Universal Exhibition Expo 2020 and determining the ways in which Russia’s Industry & Science Ministry, Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region authorities, and the Committee will work together. Now the final decision on where the exhibition will be held is to be taken through voting at the Bureau International

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 12, 2011. Russian Copper Company is going to install a crusher produced by Metso Minerals at the 220-meter mine level at its Mikheyevsky Ore Mining & Processing Plant. According to the company’s press service, the primary crusher has the capacity of processing 4,000 tons of ore an hour and will be installed directly at the open mine that is currently under construction at Mikheyevsky Ore Mining & Processing Plant. The use of a crusher which is so highly productive and which delivers the ore onto the main belt and then directly onto the processing plant

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 12, 2011. Academic District of Yekaterinburg was recently declared the best real estate among the city’s newly built objects by most of the people present at the business function dedicated to next year’s strategies on Yekaterinburg’s real estate market. The function was held in Yekaterinburg. The success of Academic District lies not only in the unparalleled scale of the project but also in the developer’s determination to make the district’s architecture both expressive and original. In the meantime, France, Israel, Italy, Russia, and the United States’ leading

Rosaviation decided in the course of its November meeting on chartered flights permissions to impose a ban on VIM Avia, Tatarstan, and Yakutia operating flights to Europe, the Association of Russian tour operators reports. ‘VIM Avia, Tatarstan, and Yakutia will not be able to operate their New Year flight schemes to Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Italy, or Spain because of the ban imposed by Rosaviation on their Europe-bound flights. Transaero was also denied the permission to operate flights to Italy,’ the Association says.

AVS Group announced that their Manhattan Business Center in downtown Yekaterinburg would only be commissioned next year instead of this one. The construction started in May 2007, and the commissioning deadlines have already been shifted a few times. For one, the commissioning date was first set for the end of 2010, then for July 2011. The latest update so far stated that the center would start operating at the end of 2011. The developer promises this is the last time the opening has been put off till a later date. ‘Rostechnadzor committee is expected to start all the commissioning inspections

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service considered the petition placed by Integrated Energy Systems Limited (located at Panayides Building, 2nd Floor, Apt. 3, Georgiou Griva Digeni Avenue, Limassol 3030, Cyprus) regarding the purchase of a voting shareholding in TGK-9 that would give Integrated Energy Systems Limited the right to control over 25% of the company’s voting shares and would give the people involved in Integrated Energy Systems Limited the right to control over 75% of the company’s voting shares and decided to approve of it.

Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service decided to annul BNP Paribas Vostok’s license of a professional participant of the securities market for carrying out depositary activity. The decision was taken after the bank had placed an application to this extent and provided documentary proofs of having no unmet professional liabilities.

Ural Airlines, one of Russia’s top six largest air carriers in terms of passenger turnover, and Cologne Airport are launching a new direct flight from Cologne to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Flights will be operated from Cologne every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; starting June, flights will be available five times a week. All of these will be operated using the comfortable Airbus A320 planes with fully equipped business class and economy class sections. The cheapest tickets are available for ?80 for economy class and ?350 for business class (one way). The timetable has been designed so as

Once an international Architects’ Board has been set up in Academic District of Yekaterinburg, the entire city’s appeal will become much stronger. Our city has a few schools of architectural thought, which is a very good thing. However, attracting some foreign experts will definitely add some color to the city’s architecture,’ Alexander Kosintsev, who has a PhD in Economics and is a Professor at Ural State University of Economics, told UrBC. For now, an Architects’ District Council has been set up in Academic District that has well-reputed Russian and foreign architects on the board. ‘If

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the Russian residents’ demand for the U.S. dollars rose by nearly two times in October compared with September 2011. Russians bought over $1bn worth of the U.S. dollars altogether, while the net demand for the euro decreased by over two and a half times, RIA Novosti refers to the Central Bank’s report as stating. This means that the demand for the euro came to $200m in October 2011, Bank Koltso Urala reports. Experts point out that this trend has been brought about by the instability in the Eurozone: the trust in the euro has been undermined, while the

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) Board of Directors is to consider the company’s strategic development program for 2012-2016 in the course of a meeting that is expected to take place on December 14, 2011. The agenda of the meeting also covers issues related to the development of the company’s main strategic projects, the company’s annual consolidated budget for the year 2012, and the BOD action plan for the next year.

Ural Airlines will keep on transferring passengers from the military sector in 2012. The company was placed on the list of Russia’s five largest air carriers that were approved by the Defense Ministry to transfer the military, the airline’s press office reports. ‘The fact that the airline was placed on the MoD’s list proves the great quality of the services rendered by the company as well as the airline’s reliability and safety,’ the office says.