OAO Ural Chemical Agents Plant’s Board of Directors terminated the authority of the plant’s General Director Vitaliy Sviridov before the official end of his term. Sviridov owns 0.04% of the enterprise’s shares and is to be succeeded by the newly appointed Oleg Afanasiev.

The first meeting of Ural Federal University’s Supervisory Board is currently taking place in Yekaterinburg. The proceedings have been approved of by Russia’s Education Minister Andrei Fursenko. The university’s Supervisory Board comprises eleven members: Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin, the Soviet of the Federation’s Member Eduard Rossel, CEO Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company Andrei Kozitsin, CEO Pipe Metallurgical Company Dmitriy Pumpyanskiy, First Deputy Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Alexander Beletskiy, Mayor

Nazim Efendiev was appointed Managing Director of Ural Steel (member of Metalloinvest Holding) recently. He has already assumed office, the spokesperson for the holding reports. ‘I am truly delighted to be managing Ural Steel once again. I worked here for five years earlier, so I know quite well that this team can cope with any challenge. This is a company of high-class professionals, and it is an honor to work with them,’ Nazim Efendiev says. In fact, Nazim Efendiev had been the General Director of Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation until July 2009; in addition, he still holds a Deputy’s

ОOO Mayak Corporation had 3.4 million RUR worth of overdue budget payments on June 1, 2010, Sverdlovsk Region tax inspectorate reports. The sum includes 2.3 million RUR the corporation owes Sverdlovsk Region’s consolidated budget. These figures were announced during the recent meeting of the regional business support committee chaired by Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin. Anatoly Gredin said that human factor was partially responsible for the decrease in many local developers’ tax payments. The thing is, the construction companies are organized so as to unite all the parties

‘We might have merged into Greater Yekaterinburg in just one year if all the elected officials in every municipality involved assumed and left offices at one and the same time. The main challenge that Sverdlovsk Region’s legislative authorities need to resolve is the transition period. They need to decide just how citizens and officials should live and work when one town council’s powers have already expired and the executives of another one can still remain in office. This is why the realistic deadline for the official merger of local satellites into Greater Yekaterinburg would be the year

Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin coordinated a meeting of the regional business support committee recently; the meeting was attended by the heads of Sverdlovsk Region’s leading construction companies. The agenda of the meeting covered issues related to the economic and financial state of the local building enterprises and to the measures taken by these enterprises to pay more taxes to the region’s consolidated budget. In addition, the attendees discussed the builders’ need to pay off their state-subsidized bank loans. ZAO Nova-Stroy’s top executive Sergey Malafeev reported

The non-ferrous metals processing plant based in Revda, Sverdlovsk Region, finished last year off with 89.66 million RUR worth of losses. The company’s stockholders decided to balance the losses off by reducing the amount of profits made in the previous years. They also thought it best not to pay any share dividend for the year 2009.

Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities held a meeting dedicated to preventing a possible emergency in Malyshevskiy municipality. The meeting was attended by Deputy Mayor of Malyshevskiy municipality, officers from Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Security Service, and representatives of ZAO Zelen Kamen and Kaliningrad amber plant. It was determined that OOO Mariinskaya Holding Company, the former subsoil user of Malyshevskiy emerald and beryllium deposit, rented the deposit to ZAO Zelen Kamen. Now the latter is currently undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, while the

RID-Expert RA (a consortium uniting the Russian Institute of Directors and Expert RA Rating Agency) gave Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) 7+ for its advanced corporate governance practices. MMK’s corporate governance policies were monitored in May 2009-May 2010. According to the Consortium, the enterprise is unique in that the functions of the proprietor and those of a manager are embodied in the company’s majority shareholder that owns 85% of MMK’s common stock. In addition, the enterprise has plenty of minority stockholders, which was why the monitoring focused particularly closely

‘The recession has slowed the implementation of Yekaterinburg City project down a bit. At the moment, the construction site is fully prepared for work. A lot of serious operations related to engineering and transport infrastructure have already been carried out. I am positive that this year we’ll resume working on Yekaterinburg City project,’ Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy announced at the 13th National Real Estate Congress in Yekaterinburg. The project actually provides for the construction of twelve different buildings, including the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Iset Tower, Ural Tower,

The Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) set up an ad hoc committee that will investigate the causes and circumstances of a large-scale fatal accident at Evraz Group-run Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise/VGOK’s Magnetitovaya mine, the spokesperson for Rostechnadzor says. Under the existing legislation, the committee is to start the inquiry fifteen days after the accident has occurred. The tragedy broke out on June 1, 2010 when a big chunk of rock mass collapsed within the mine, leaving one drill operator

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ruled that the advertisements distributed by L’Etoile cosmetics chain store via text messaging were undue and illegitimate. The ads in question were sent to N. Melekhova, a local citizen, the spokesperson for the Service reports. The authorities took action against OOO Alcor-C (L’Etoile chain store) upon receiving an official complaint from Ms Melekhova; the charges had to do with violating the advertising legislation. Ms Melekhova stated that she had received four text messages with advertisements by L’Etoile (OOO

OAO Bank24.ru (Life Financial Group’s asset) sustained 185.3 million RUR worth of losses by the end of 2009, the bank’s annual financial report says. The bank made 859 million RUR on interest payments last year, which was 195.76 million RUR less than in the year 2008. This decrease in interest profits had to do with the shrinking lending portfolio. Besides this, Bank24.ru’s commission profits amounted to 535.5 million RUR, which was 75 million RUR less than in the year 2008. Finally, this Yekaterinburg-based bank’s capital went down by 393.6 million RUR, or 43.66% and thus declined from 901.5

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s stockholders thought it best not to pay any share dividend for 2009 because the bank sustained losses last year. According to the company’s official report released at the AGM on June 1, 2010, Bank Severnaya Kazna’s losses amounted to 4.63 billion RUR in 2009. The stockholders decided that the losses should be partially covered by the leftovers of profits left undistributed in the previous years; namely, 117.2 million RUR worth of losses will be compensated in this way. Also, 699.6 million RUR worth of share-issuing profits and 30.83 million RUR from the bank’s reserve

Central Yekaterinburg Department of Rospotrebnadzor’s Sverdlovsk Region division informs the heads of local stores that Nestlé decided to call off its instant coffee brands Alta, Rica, Cap Colombie, Estet, Kenjara, and Espresso from most international markets, including the Russian Federation’s one. The decision has been caused by the fact that the glass jars covered in plastic wrapping that are used to package 100-gram portions of instant coffee can easily crack during transportation, which means the coffee powder inside may contain small glass particles. ‘The instant coffee offered under

ZAO Ural Turbine Plant dumped more manufacturing water in the River Iset in 2009 compared with the earlier years. This was due to a number of equipment breakdowns at the plant, Sverdlovsk Region’s Minister for Natural Resources Konstantin Kryuchkov says. At the same time, OAO Uralelectromed (a non-ferrous alloys manufacturer based in Verkh-Neyvinsk), the communal housing services provider of Malyshev, and the water-heating boiler house of Novouralsk reduced the amount of water they dump in the river thanks to reconstructions and the launch of new filtering facilities. To date, the total

Sberbank of Russia and MasterCard launched a special offer on the International Children’s Day: customers who use their Sberbank-issued MasterCard or Maestro cards to pay for at least 1,000 RUR worth of purchases on June 1-21, 2010 will take part in a prize-winning lottery, with prizes provided by Disney-Pixar studio. The ‘jackpot’ is a trip to Disneyland in Paris for four. Other prizes include 1,000 tea sets and puzzles featuring the newest Toy Story’s characters (the film sequel will first hit the screens on June 17, 2010). ‘The more card transactions you have, the better your chances are,’

The Russian Federation Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) made OAO Uralkaliy face administrative liability and pay 103.69 million RUR worth of fines. On December 21, 2009, FAS declared that the company had violated Article 11 (part 1, paragraph 1) of the Federal Competition Protection Act through price-collusion. Namely, OAO Uralkaliy, OOO Mineral Trading, and OAO Sylvinite colluded so as to raise the price of potassium chloride on the Russian market up to 4,750 RUR per ton in the second half of 2009.

Vladimir Kulakov has been elected General Director of OAO Uralkhimmash for another year. The decision to this extent was taken by the company’s Board of Directors shortly before Kulakov’s current term in office was about to expire. In addition, Vladimir Kulakov was allowed to combine his position of the plant’s GD with a number of executive posts in Uralkhimmash’s affiliated companies.

Ural Airlines’ customers can now enjoy the new online flight map using the company’s website. The service allows one to track the airplanes currently in the air and to see which routes they are using and which cities they are flying over at any given moment. If one presses the airplane icon, information about the route, the flight number, the scheduled and the actual departure time and date, the scheduled and the actual arrival time and date, the duration of the flight, and aircraft type will be provided. The map also shows the airplanes that have arrived in one’s airport of entry within the