Standard & Poor's promoted Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous District’s long-term credit rating from BBB- to BBB and confirmed the region’s national scale rating at ruAAA, with Stable Rating Outlook. The agency reports an increase in the rating has to do with the measures the district’s administration has been taking to institutionalize its reserve fund that is crucial to the elimination of risks generated by the budget revenues’ great volatility. The region’s great dependence on its major taxpayer OAO Gazprom (ВВВ/Stable/А-2), as well as only a limited opportunity for profit prediction and

LUKOIL Permnefteprodukt raised the retail gasoline prices it offers at its Yekaterinburg-based filling stations by 1.1% to 1.8%, the company informed Interfax-Ural. At the moment, a liter of Normal-80 comes at 22.6 RUR (which is 0.4 RUR or 1.8% more than earlier), a liter of Regular Euro-92 costs 23.1 RUR (which is 0.4 RUR or 1.8% more than earlier), Ecto Plus 95 costs 25.5 RUR per liter (which 0.3 RUR or 1.2% more than earlier), and a liter of Super Euro 98 comes at 26.9 RUR per liter (which is 0.3 RUR or 1.1% more than earlier). These prices were introduced on April 29, 2011. The news

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant came up with a performance report for the first quarter of 2011. The enterprise’s steel pipe sales came to 488,000 tons, which is 45% better than in the first quarter of 2010. The sales of large-diameter pipes rose by 94%, OCTG sales went up by 26%, and the industrial pipe sales increased by 33%. We launched a new, hi tech LDP department called Vysota 239 last year. This March, the department reached its full production capacity and manufactured 52,000 tons of goods. I am very proud of our plant team that managed so rapidly to complete the project as well as

Avianova Airlines and Surgut Airport cannot seem to agree on the time slots, which results in the company being unable to operate its flights from Krasnodar to Surgut since April 30, 2011, Avianova told RIA Novosti. Over 4,000 tickets have already been sold for these flights. The airport and the air carrier reached an agreement on operating the flights from Surgut to Krasnodar on March 11, 2011. but Avianova still hasn’t received any slot confirmation, the airline explained. To the best of the company’s knowledge, the time slots it is asking for are available.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service took legal action against METRO Cash & Carry; the company is suspected of violating Article 13 (part 1, paragraph 1) of the Federal Act on the Regulation of Trade by the State in the Russian Federation. It is believed that METRO Cash & Carry has been discriminating against its foods suppliers. The FAS feels the discrimination consists in the company making the prices dependent on the foods supply turnover volume. Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service also believes the law is violated in that METRO charges all its suppliers of one and the same

Ural Airlines keeps renovating its fleet of vehicles. On April 29, 2011, a new 220-seat Airbus A321 landed in Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg. The seats are actually made of genuine leather, the company’s press officer reports. This means Ural Airlines now own seventeen Airbus planes, that is, a dozen A320 ones an five A321 ones. Like the two A321 aircraft the company has bought earlier this year, the new plane was acquired on leasing terms and used to belong to an Irish airline before. Ural Airlines need ever more planes, which is why renovating its fleet of vehicles is essential to the

Alfa-Bank and Ural Airlines launched a special offer dubbed Get a Visa and Fly! Every customer who gets a special Ural Airlines-Visa-Alfa-Bank card between May 1, 2011 and June 30, 2011 is going to receive extra welcome bonuses – thrice the usual amount, the air carrier’s press officer reports. Customers can get a debit or a credit card Ural Airlines-Visa-Alfa-Bank at any of Alfa-Bank’s offices. A customer with such a visa is automatically included in the airline’s loyalty scheme also known as Wings Club and gets some bonus rubles in his or her account. Upon the issuance of the card, the

Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) competed its all-round scheduled field inspection of Eye Microsurgery, a Yekaterinburg-based ophthalmologic center that runs on several premises in Sverdlovsk Region. When inspecting the premises, the officers of Sverdlovsk Region Division of Rospotrebnadzor’s Yekaterinburg Department found a number of sanitary legislation and consumer rights legislation offenses, the spokesperson for the agency reports. The company and the company’s management therefore had to face administrative liability, with legal action taken by the officers of

UrBC, Moscow, April 28, 2011. The oil and gas company Rosneft transferred 1.5bn RUR to the state budget recently, which was actually an administrative fine. Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service announced in 2008 that the company had violated Article 10 (paragraph 1) of the Competition Protection Law. The agency also imposed a fine upon Rosneft in accordance with Article 14.31 of the Russian Federation Administrative Offence Code (which states a fine could come to anything between 1% and 15% of an offender’s proceeds resulting from the sale of product or service on the market where the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 28, 2011. LeMa violated the consumers’ rights to get timely, essential, and accurate information about the products on offer as far as its KIRBY vacuum cleaners were concerned. A Yekaterinburg dweller applied to Sverdlovsk Region Hygiene & Epidemiology Center’s Central Yekaterinburg division in February 2011, asking for legal advice regarding her clash with OOO LeMa located at 3 Bekhterev St. Off. 6 in Yekaterinburg. The said company prepared a demonstration of their product and signed a purchase and sale agreement for KIRBY model Sentra G10E in January 2011.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 28, 2011. President of Renova-StroyGroup Veniamin Golubitsky turned fifty-four today. Veniamin Golubitsky used to be a law scholar who moved all the way from a graduate student at the Chair of Administrative Law at M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University to Head of Law Department at the Institute of Philosophy & Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Ural branch. He graduated from Moscow State University Law School with a major in legal science and is a PhD scholar. Golubitsky was employed with Sverdlovsk Region state authorities for nearly ten years; his work

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 28, 2011. Sredneuralsky Copper-Smelting Plant intends to pass the dividend for the year 2010; this was a recommendation coming from the company’s BOD. The annual general meeting is set for June 17, 2011.

UrBC, Moscow, April 26, 2011. The rating agency Expert RA reports it has called off the paying capacity rating of Tinkoff Credit Systems Bank because the rating in question has expired and because the company decided not to have it renewed. The bank used to have a rating of B++, with Acceptable paying capacity level.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 26, 2011. Ural Airlines is operating all the international chartered flights from Yekaterinburg, Saint Petersburg, and Moscow it has promised to operate, which is a great number of flights to a variety of international destinations. The company is committed to offering tickets only for those flights which have been coordinated with all the authorities, so the passengers who have already bought the tickets have nothing to worry about, the company’s press service says. Now Rosaviation recently published a list of air carriers that were not allowed to operate

UrBC, Moscow, April 27, 2011. The international rating agency confirmed the long-term credit rating of Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK), the Russian steel manufacturer, at BBB-. The rating was issued for the company’s ruble bonds (series 01) worth a total of 5bn RUR, the company’s 10bn RUR 05 Series bonds, and its 10bn RUR 06 Series bonds; NLMK was also rated at ruAAA as far as its national scale rating goes, with Stable rating outlook. ‘We would nevertheless like to mention that the company’s increased debt makes it more vulnerable to the industry’s potential decline. Worsening

UrBC, Moscow, April 26, 2011. Russian Railways suggests raising the freight fares by 3.4% for investment purposes, RIA Novosti refers to head of the company Vladimir Yakunin as saying. ‘The current situation is a bit strange, for example, the energy sector enterprises actually cover for their investments through charging the customers. To balance our budget without taking into account the new predictions that come up, we propose that the ‘investment’ part of the fare should come to about 3.4%,’ Yakunin said. Meanwhile, Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Andrei Nedosekov said earlier that his

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 26, 2011. The customers of telecommunications company Motiv will be able to enjoy roaming by default starting May 1, 2011, as long as the customers use the tariff schemes of the Mobi GSM range (except for Boltastiki) and those like Urban Direct and Dewwwice, the company’s press service reports. What is more, the company will also launch its new service Roaming Non-Stop this May; the service provides for some new national and international roaming options and the reduced required minimum amount of money one has to have in one’s account for the roaming to be offered.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won the IT Leader Prize in the course of the 9th annual national competition. The awarding ceremony took place in Moscow, with over five hundred representatives of companies that design and introduce innovational IT solutions in their business practice attending the event. MMK is definitely the Russian ferrous metallurgy’s top IT products launcher. This primarily refers to the Oracle E-Business Suite-based unified corporate information system that the company is now using. The system provides data on the company’s financial and economic performance

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 25, 2011. Rosaviation allowed Ural Airlines to start operating scheduled flights from Sochi to Vienna and from Moscow to Cologne and Podgorica, the state agency’s updated list of Russian air carriers with international flights permissions states. At the same time, Rosaviation rejected RusLine’s application for operating flights from Moscow to Gyandzha and did not allow VIM Avia to operate more flights in this direction. As for chartered flights, Rosaviation declined the applications of eleven air companies willing to operate chartered flights from Moscow. Nordavia

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 25, 2011. The Yekaterinburg-based developer Atomstroycomplex decided not to use the name of Romanoff for its new apartment block in Moskovskaya St in Yekaterinburg. Following a re-branding campaign, the living quarter is now called Moscow. Red Pepper reports the change of the name had to do with the decision to position the product differently on the estate market. The company explained the earlier name of Romanoff had too many implicit negative connotations.