UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 6, 2010. Koltsovo Airport provided us with the friction coefficient of 0.32 at the runway, which was not enough for the aircraft as big as ours. We needed the coefficient of about 0.4 at least; as it happens, the perfect coefficient comes to as much as 0.65,’ Orenburg Airlines First Deputy Director Sergey Lazarev told UrBC. Meanwhile, the company’s airplane hasn’t been able to leave Yekaterinburg for Goa for over twelve hours now. ‘It’s one thing when a plane like this is bound for Moscow, but a flight to Goa is quite another matter, as the in-flight time comes

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 6, 2010. VFS Global, a visa center which will offer visas to France, Bulgaria, and Greece to the locals, opened in Yekaterinburg. The center’s representatives explain the introduction of such a service in Yekaterinburg has to do with a 30% increase in the number of visa applications from people willing to travel to Europe. The center’s director Elena Trushina explains the place was mainly set up to make it easier for the customers to apply for a visa. ‘It only takes an applicant fifteen minutes at the most to submit the papers. A French visa will take three days

Chelyabinsk Region’s authorities promise to provide their foreign investors with the most comfortable terms to operate in the region, Governor Mikhail Yurevitch announced at a meeting with the heads of foreign countries’ representation in Ural Federal District. A meeting of such diplomatic importance was actually held in Chelyabinsk Region for the first time: twelve diplomats were invited to the Governor’s residence altogether. These were the Consuls of China, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Byelorussia, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, the United States, Vietnam, and France in Ural

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 2, 2010. The travel agents who cooperated with Capital Tours tour operator are now suffering losses. Capital Tours’ problems began on November 15 when Russia’s major tour operator’s accounts were frozen by the creditor banks, so the company was unable to provide for the trips booked by its customers. Capital Tours could be saved through capital investment (some $15m were needed), and there actually were some investors who offered the money to the company. One such investor was the International Financial Club Bank controlled by Mikhail Prokhorov. The bank offered

UrBC, Moscow, December 3, 2010. Bank Uralsib, which is controlled by Nikolai Tsvetkov and has recently made its ownership structure simpler, is going to find a strategic investor of UniCredit or Raiffeisen range or launch an IPO. No other options are available to large private banks because of growing competition with the state-run organizations, the bank reports. However, Russian stockholders are still planning to sell their assets at pre-recession prices, while foreign investors are no longer willing to pay such prices at all, Kommersant refers to a number of experts as saying. ‘Uralsib

Just like a year earlier, the dwellers of Yekaterinburg are evaluating the city in terms of its strong and weak points that could attract or put off high-profile visitors to the place. The Urals’ capital was listed among the cities that will host the world football championship in 2018. There are thirteen cities on the list altogether: Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Kazan, Saransk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Sochi, and Yekaterinburg. The matches will be played at the Central Stadium which will be fully restored next year. The public feels

The world football championship matches will be played in twelve Russian cities, with Yekaterinburg as a reserve place, head of Russian Football Union’s press service Andrei Malosolov told United Russia’s official web portal. ‘The cities which are to host the championship in 2018 have already been selected. The so-called clusters, namely, one in the North-West, one in the Volga Region, the Central one, and the one in the South, have already been determined. The clusters comprise twelve city plus Yekaterinburg as a reserve. These cities are Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl,

UrBC, Moscow, December 2, 2010. ‘The foods delivered to Russia by Valio, a Finnish company, raise increasingly more concerns from Rospotrebnadzor,’ RIA Novosti quotes head of the state consumer rights watchdog Gennady Onischenko as saying. ‘The melted cheese packs imported from Finland by Valio, a company that is associated with the market economy and good quality in Russia, unfortunately come to look more and more suspicious,’ Onischenko said. The executive explained the worries had to do with the use of some exotic oils in the production of the cheese in question; he did not specify what

The certificate-issuing company Germanischer Lloyd provided OAO Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) with a certificate that proves the enterprise’s Mill5000-manufactured shipbuilding steel’s compliance with the certificating body’s standards. The unique plate Mill5000 was launched at MMK in July 2009; the unit’s capacity comes to 1.5 million tons of steel a year; its produce was meant for the shipbuilding industry as well as some others. The mill’s technological characteristics make it possible to manufacture things for the oil platforms stationed in the Arctic Regions and for the

‘The foods delivered to Russia by Valio, a Finnish company, raise increasingly more concerns from Rospotrebnadzor,’ RIA Novosti quotes head of the state consumer rights watchdog Gennady Onischenko as saying. ‘The melted cheese packs imported from Finland by Valio, a company that is associated with the market economy and good quality in Russia, unfortunately come to look more and more suspicious,’ Onischenko said. The executive explained the worries had to do with the use of some exotic oils in the production of the cheese in question; he did not specify what specific problems this implied,

Each and every of OAO SKB-Bank’s offices renders a full range of services to private individuals, so one can open a bank account there, take out a loan, get a money order or make various kinds of payments. The latter service is particularly popular with the bank’s customers, as over 1 million housing bills have been paid through SKB-Bank since the beginning of the year,’ the bank’s press service reports. In addition to housing bills, the bank’s outlets accept and handle mobile and landline phone bills, Internet fees, security service and door phone payments, tuition fees, road fines and much

Travelers from the Urals will try to be more careful in Egypt rather than to give up on the idea of going altogether. All the tours to Egypt have already been booked, and not a single customer has asked for their money back so far. After all, there are a lot of unpleasant things that can happen to you in Sharm El Sheikh, for example, jellyfish stings. One should always watch out and keep safe. Then, unlike, say, Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh is a developing city, with new hotels and restaurants opening all the time. This is a very appealing factor for tourists,’ Director of OOO Inna-Tour Inna

The National Call Center Association did a research aimed at identifying the best call centers among Russia’s eighty largest banks and insurance companies recently. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s Information & Help Center was rated one of the country’s Top 10 call centers within the framework of this research. ‘The call center operators’ primary task is to provide the bank’s customers with information on the bank’s activity quickly and in all the detail; they also have to give a full account of the bank’s services. In case a customer has questions related to some

TNK-BP placed a petition on buying Koltsovo Airport’s filling station with Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service. The airport reports they need to sell the station in order to make the regional jet fuel market more liberal; the transaction sum has not been announced yet, Kommersant reports. Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin announced a few days ago that the airport’s fuel filling station (a part of which belongs to the regional government) might be sold to an outside organization. The Governor explained several stations owned by different proprietors were needed at the airport

Russia’s federal consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor reports the outbreak of cholera on the island of Haiti is growing increasingly more serious. According to Haiti’s Healthcare Ministry’s official data, over 18,000 people diagnosed with cholera had been hospitalized by mid-November, and over a thousand died. Patients diagnosed with cholera have been registered in all of the country’s ten departments as well as in the Dominican Republic and the state of Florida, U.S. The World Health Organization’s Pan-American office predicts the epidemic will be spread further and affect the

Most Yekaterinburg-based computer users were faced with a sudden breakup of QIP, an instant messenger program. When a user is trying to get connected to the program, the system tells them the connections limit has already been exceeded. Meanwhile, no information on the large-scale hook-offs has been provided via the program’s official website.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service filed yet another lawsuit against Evraz Group. The company is suspected of setting monopoly vanadium-containing raw materials prices and of discriminating its consumers, RBC daily reports. The complaint against the company was placed by Chusovskoy Metallurgical Plant; the plant was unhappy with the fact that Evraz’s Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise set monopoly prices and practiced different price policies for different consumers of vanadium-containing raw materials. Now Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise is Russia’s only

The international rating agency Standard & Poor's promoted the Russian telecommunications provider Uralsvyazinform’s long-term credit rating from B+ to BB-. Besides, all the ratings were taken off the agency’s CreditWatch list and have Positive outlook. ‘This promotion means we believe the company’s financial profile has come to look better recently,’ says Standard & Poor's credit analyst Alexander Gryaznov. ‘The company’s liquidity estimates were improved from Weak to Sufficient since Uralsvyazinform managed to reduce its dependence on short-term debts this year, he

A portion of counterfeit gods was confiscated by Nizhniy Tagil Customs officers and the representatives of Serov and Sosva law-enforcement agencies in the town of Serov. It has been reported by Ural Customs Administration that no papers necessary for the legal import of sportswear bearing the logos of Lacoste, Adidas, Umbro, and Nike could be provided. An expert examination also made it clear that the goods in question were not genuine products. This means selling this sportswear infringed upon the trademark owners’ rights, so 230 fake items of clothing were confiscated. All in all, the

OAO Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was rated second on Russia’s Top 90 companies list for the year 2010. The information transparency research (on the basis of which this rating was compiled) was carried out through the joint efforts of Standard & Poor’s and CEFIR (the Center for Economic and Financial Research). The only data used in the research were those obtained through the open media sources. The methodology of the analysis was devised by Standard & Poor’s and comprised 110 criteria grouped along three main sections: a company’s ownership scheme and the stockholders’