UrBC, Moscow, April 25, 2011. Moscow Arbitration Court ruled that the tour operator Capital Tour should undergo bankruptcy proceedings, Russian Agency for Legal and Judicial Information reports. The court ruled that the company’s own insolvency application was well-grounded. Evgeny Shklyayev was appointed the company’s trustee in bankruptcy. The hearings were set for November 24, 2011. Capital Tour currently owns its creditors 1.57bn RUR, including 1.57bn RUR worth of acknowledged debt, 6.67m RUR worth of indispensable payments, and 83,000 RUR worth of wage arrears.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 25, 2011. Starting April 27, 2011, Ural Airlines will be offering its customers a Yekaterinburg-Larnaka flight. The flight will be available on a weekly basis at first, that is, every Wednesday, and from May 29, 2011 to October 26, 2011, it will be operated twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays. The airline reports the flight takes four hours and fifty minutes; it will be operated using a comfortable Airbus 320.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 25, 2011. Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service decided to halt the issue of The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals’ ordinary registered paperless shares. The additional share issue was registered on February 10, 2011 (series 1-01-32851-D-004D).

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) decided to get their own fleet of railway vehicles to make sure the plant’s Vysota 239 department receives timely shipments of MMK Mill 5000 steel sheets. This is all part of the two companies’ strategic cooperation initiative. The decision to go through with the company railway fleet project was initially taken when Vysota 239 department and Mill 5000 at Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and MMK, respectively, were under constriction in 2007. The two companies bought forty-four special twelve-meter carriages meant for

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 22, 2011. Introducing innovation in the production process is the basis of today’s business practices, the General Director of Sinara Group Mikhail Khodorovsky said at a press conference of Ural State University Higher School of Economics in Yekaterinburg. ‘Modernization is a big thing nowadays; one frequently speaks of importing technologies as one the ways to convert the Russian economy into intensive economic growth mode. It is obvious, however, that technology transfer is a tool for innovations rather than just a proviso of technological catching-up,’ he

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 22, 2011. Rosnano is going to obtain a controlling shareholding in Russky Magniy, a plant the construction of which will being in Asbest, Sverdlovsk Region, at the end of 2011, the regional Industry & Science Minister Alexander Petrov told RIA Novosti. The design team is currently working on the project and design documentation; the plant is expected to use a unique mineral production technology that will cost about 865m RUR to implement. ‘Rosnano, which will own the controlling shareholding in the business, will act as the project’s main investor. An agreement

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 22, 2011. 43,994 dwellers of Sverdlovsk Region applied to the state employment agencies between January and March 2011, which was 21% less than a year earlier (55,694 people). Between October 1, 2008 and April 1, 2011 344 enterprises reported they were planning to make a total of 57,840 employees redundant due to liquidation or shrinkage, with 45,731 people actually losing their jobs. 20,514 people found new jobs without having to apply to employment agencies, including 6,786 people who found a place within the same companies. 17,391 ex-workers came to the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 22, 2011. Government of Sverdlovsk Region, Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant, and Pervouralsk Metallurgical College signed a cooperation agreement valid though 2015; under this agreement, the college will train highly professional workers for today’s advanced metallurgical companies. This is the company’s pilot project on introducing new approaches to training highly skilled workers who would be useful for a wide range of economic fields. The agreement was signed by Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin, the shareholder of ChTPZ Group (of which Pervouralsk New

UrBC, Moscow, April 22, 2011. Russian Railways are planning to raise its freight fares by 3.8% in the year 2011, RBC refers to the company’s head Vladimir Yakunin as saying. ‘My proposal is to go with a 3.8% indexation and to consider some additional subsidies in the year 2012 to make sure the company can meet its goals. We can provide 40bn RUR ourselves (which will also cover taking out a loan) and we expect the government to allocate another 40bn RUR using the budgetary resources,’ he declared.

Elizabeth Hafner, Director for Russia and Eurasia US Trade is going to visit Yekaterinburg on April 26, 2011. Ms Hafner is expected to meet the members of Sverdlovsk Region Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs, to give a speech to the students of a local college, and to take part in the session of the Presidential Program Alumni Association’s top club dedicated to the benefits of joining the WTO in terms of innovational economic development. As far as Ural Federal District goes, Ms Hafner is also going to pay a visit to Tyumen.

Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service decided to halt the share issue of Yekaterinburg-based Ural Transportation Machine-Building Plant’s ordinary registered paperless shares. The additional share issue was registered as 1-01-55454-E-002D on March 29, 2011.

Bank Severnaya Kazna stopped operating as a legal entity with such a name on April 20, 2011. The application for listing the bank as liquidated through a merger was placed with the state body in charge of registering legal entities. The Bank of Russia announced in late March that Bank Severnaya Kazna had begun merging with Alfa-Bank.

The international rating agency downgraded the Russian telecommunications operator VimpelCommunications long-term credit rating as well as the accompanying liabilities ratings from BB+ to BB. The ratings were also taken off the CreditWatch list, with Negative rating outlook. The rating agency’s analysts feel that the acquisition of Wind Telecom will increase VimpelCom and VimpelCom Ltd’s liabilities burden considerably, which means this debt load will not meet the BB+ criteria.

SkyExpress halted the operation of flights from Tyumen on April 18, 2011. Passengers with tickets for the flights that have been cancelled can either travel to Moscow from Yekaterinburg or Chelyabinsk or get their money back. Passengers who want to take the plane after April 18, 2011, will be notified by our Booking Center in a timely manner. They will be offered airplane tickets for Yekaterinburg-Moscow or Chelyabinsk-Moscow flights instead, or they can apply for a refund in accordance with the existing reimbursement regulations,’ the company’s official release says.

The Russian National Association of Securities Market Participants (NAUFOR) reports sixteen companies have been excluded from its membership. Following the applications to this extent, placed by the companies themselves, North-Western Management Company based in Saint Petersburg, Con-Trust based in Kurgan, Moscow’s Absolut Bank, Moscow-based Deutsche Security, Intellect-Capital Financial Company of Kemerovo, Starfin based in Moscow, and First Czech-Russian bank based in Moscow are now no longer NAUFOR members. Chelyabinsk-based Milcom-Invest has been excluded for not paying its membership

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service declared that Russian Railways violated Article 17 of the Federal Competition Protection Act (the one which prohibits favoritism towards a bidder in an auction), FAS’s press service reports. The company’s offense consisted in the following: Russian Railways conducted its Tender 907 on thirteen different offers; eight lots consisted in the opportunity to sign car insurance agreements with Russian Railways subsidiaries in 2010-2013, that is, for the duration of three years. Under the terms of the auction, applicants had to submit proofs of their automobile

Experts from Bank Koltso Urala took part in a trade and economic conference with the representatives of the Czech business community. The event was coordinated by Sverdlovsk Region Government and took place in the Hyatt Regency Yekaterinburg Hotel. Among the reports presented at the conference were those made by Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Industry & Science Alexander Petrov, the Czech Industry & Trade Minister Martin Kocourek, the Czech Republic’s deputy Agriculture Minister Juraj Chmiel, and the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce & Industry for the CIS František Masopust. The

The administration of Sredneuralsky Copper-Smelting Plant will have to face administrative prosecution because of some labor legislation violations, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities reports. An inspection by the prosecution authorities and the officers from the regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state technological safety watchdog) revealed that the gangways and fencing at the copper smelting department’s furnace charge sector were out of order; moreover, the enterprise does not check the buildings of its departments for sturdiness on a regular

Uralredmet decided not to declare or distribute any dividend for 2010. The decision was made at the company’s annual general meeting on April 15, 2011 in Verkhyaya Pyshma, Sverdlovsk Region.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, April 20, 2011. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was tested by a group of experts from Renault-Nissan recently; the object of the inspection was the company’s quality management system. The experts spent two days meeting MMK management and qualified employees as well as visiting the production departments in charge of making automobile body sheets, namely, sheet-rolling shop 5 and the coating department. The experts looked into how well the company’s quality management system meets the ASAS-P standards, those of the unified assessment system of