The deputies of Chelyabinsk Region’s Legislative Assembly approved of having current Mayor of Chelyabinsk Mikhail Yurevitch as the new Governor of Chelyabinsk Region. Mikhail Yurevitch was presented to the deputies as a potential Governor by Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev. Petr Sumin, who has been head of the region since 1996 and whose term expires on April 22, 2010, chose not to propose himself as the candidate for the new term, RIA Novosti reports.

According to the Russian Federation Ministry of Emergencies’ preliminary report, last Friday’s fire outbreak at Hyatt Regency Ekaterinburg was caused by failing to observe the safety rules related to the use of the hotel sauna’s furnace. The Ministry’s Sverdlovsk Region division received a message about the fire on the hotel’s 20th floor at 11:13 PM. Twenty-five vehicles and eighty-one firefighters set off for the scene of the accident at once. 380 people had to be evacuated, the spokesperson for the Russian Federation Ministry of Emergencies’ Sverdlovsk Region division says. The fire was

Russian Railways Public Company expects to enhance the quality of Uralvagonzavod’s produce through both organizations’ joint effort. As it is, the quality of the Ural plant’s goods could still be worked on, President of Russian Railways Public Company Vladimir Yakunin announced at a briefing in Yekaterinburg, RIA Novosti says. ‘Today’s railway vehicles standards call for an entirely different quality level,’ he explained. Yakunin said he would not like to give any specific examples, but the company was not at all happy with some of Uralvagonzavod’s vehicles. ‘We hope that our joint efforts

The BOD of Uralsvyazinform (Urals’ major telecommunications provider) decided that the company’s current General Director Anatoly Ufimkin can resign before the end of his term and that Sergey Lukash should be appointed the company’s new GD. The decision was taken at the BOD meeting on March 19, 2010. Now Anatoly Ufimkin’s resignation was accepted after the executive had applied for this himself. Uralsvyazinform’s BOD Chairman and General Director of Svyazinvest Evgeniy Yurchenko thanked Anatoly Ufimkin for many years’ hard work at the company and offered him the position of a Counselor to

Sberbank of Russia’s Ural branch and OOO Volkswagen Financial Services RUS started offering their customers special loans meant for buying new Audi, Volkswagen, and Skoda automobiles. This loan project is part of Sberbank of Russia and OOO Volkswagen Financial Services RUS strategic cooperation program. Under these new loan agreements, when using Sberbank’s Avtokredit loan (including the cases when the loan is offered within the government’s interest payment subsidies program) to buy new Audi, Volkswagen, and Skoda automobiles from the official dealers, the customers will have to pay a loan

OAO Pnevmostroymashina published its open address to the company’s creditor banks through Kommersant. The letter was carried as an advertising material and called for understanding and support on the creditors’ part. Now the plant’s creditors are to meet on March 29, 2010. ‘Sadly, the recession has put an end to our productive cooperation; Also, the plummeting demand for hydraulic equipment among all the basic construction and road machinery manufacturers of Russia and the CIS has made things difficult for the plant. Our sales dropped by over ten times in just four months, we were forced to

The Russian mobile operator (aka OAO Vympelkom) has been found guilty of rather shameless plagiarizing, so Beeline is now busy deleting all the copies of the compromising ad from online resources, Newsru.com reports. The offending video clip advertising the company’s prices turned out to be a copy of Oren Lavie’s Her Morning Elegance, a Grammy nominee. According to NEWSru Israel, the two clips’ plots are different, but the style and the performance of Beeline’s ad bear very strong resemblance to those of Oren Lavie. The mobile operator claims the Israeli singer’s clip was only an inspiration

The decision to have AMUR, Sverdlovsk Region-based car factory, undergo bankruptcy proceedings has recently been contested. The decision was actually taken by the company’s shareholders on March 11, 2010, but has not come into effect yet. Novouralsk tax authorities and the city council filed a petition for halting the bankruptcy proceedings at the plant but refused to explain their motivation. Now the factory, currently controlled by Pavel Chernavin, was declared bust in August 2009.

The net profit of OAO Vympelkom (the owner of one of Russia’s Big Three mobile operators) amounted to $283m in the fourth quarter of 2009 (if calculated in accordance with the US GAAP). However, a year earlier the company had $816m worth of net loss, the organization reports. Nevertheless, Vympelkom’s profit in the last quarter of 2009 was 34.6% lower than that in the third quarter of 2009. Also, the quarterly revenues reached $2.3bn, which was 9.6% lower than in the last quarter of 2008.

‘Our company has big plans for developing in the Urals: this is actually a strategic territory for M.Video. This year, our new stores will appear in Yekaterinburg, Ufa, and Berezniki. In 2011, we’ll set up more stores in Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Yekaterinburg, and Ufa,’ M.Video’s press officer Nadezhda Kiseleva informed UrBC. In the meantime, the home appliances and electronic goods stores keep selling less and cutting down on the number of outlets throughout Russia. Technosila hypermarket chain, for example, halted its store in Kurgan until mid-summer. It appears that M.Video is planning

One of Russia’s major air carriers, Ural Airlines is about to enter the transportation market of Bashkortostan. The airline is going to launch flights from Ufa to Dushanbe and from Ufa to Hudzhand. The first Ufa-Dushanbe flight will be operated on April 3, 2010; the first Ufa-Hudzhand flight will be operated on April 10, 2010. Both flights will be available once a fortnight on the modern and safe Airbus A320 airplanes. Ufa-Dushanbe flight’s departure time is 11:30 PM and arrival time is 1:30 AM; Dushanbe-Ufa flight’s departure time is 3:00 AM and arrival time is 7:05 AM; Ufa-Hudzhand flight’s

OAO Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank is not going to pay its shareholders any dividends for the year 2009. This proposal of the bank’s BOD was placed on the agenda of Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank’s annual general meeting scheduled for April 22, 2010. The meeting will take place in Khanty-Mansiysk. In addition to solving the issue of dividends, the stockholders will be offered to re-elect Dmitriy Mizgulin President and Chairman of the bank’s Supervisory Board until March 17, 2015.

OAO TyumenEnergo started closing down its regional subsidiaries. According to the data provided by the company, the branches to stop operating are Ishim Electricity Networks, Tyumen Electricity Networks, Southern Electricity Networks, and Tobolsk Electricity Networks.

OAO Izhneftemash (part of Rimera, ChTPZ Group’s O&G division) signed a number of agreements with the oil companies of Kazakhstan and is to deliver over $6m worth of deep-well oil pumps’ driving gears to them. The company has already shipped its first batch of beam units to consumers; the delivery process will have been completed by September 2010. ‘Izhneftemash’s market expansion is a logical outcome of hard work aimed at promoting our produce on the Asian markets of the CIS. In addition to doing business with Kazakhstan, we expect to enter the markets of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan this

The net profit of OAO Uralkaliy (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) decreased by 25.5 times last year in comparison to the year 2008, that is, from 29.48 billion RUR to 1.15 billion RUR. The company explains such a large drop in profit has to do with shrinking produce sales, which, in their turn, were caused by the plummeting global demand at the time of an economic recession. ‘What is more, last year the company had to pay 7.8 billion RUR to compensate for the expenses related to dealing with the accident at one of their divisions,’ Kommersant reports.

OAO Gazpromneft-Tyumen paid a 16.5-million-ruble fine for price collusion on Tyumen Region’s oil market. The company transferred this sum to the budget after it had lost its case at the appeals instance. Gazpromneft-Tyumen had insisted that the ruling of Tyumen Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service be declared invalid; now the FAS’s division had demanded that the company face administrative liability. Tyumen Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service found out that OAO Gazpromneft-Tyumen, OOO Lukoil-Uralnefteprodukt, and OOO AZS-N1 had colluded on their pricing

‘ZAO Russian Copper Company and the BOD Chairman Igor Altushkin have nothing to do with MetallInvestService’s activity; they are neither employed by nor own nor are the founders or co-founders of this business. MetallInvestService was only a raw materials supplier for one of Russian Copper OCompany’s enterprises and has bought our ready produce once or twice,’ Russian Copper Company’s press officer said in response to the news item carried by RBC daily. RBC daily claimed Igor Altushkin might be related to a criminal lawsuit involving VAT return for the non-existent non-ferrous scrap metal

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport denied the claims made by the public prosecution authorities for transportation; the authorities said in their letter as of January 18, 2010 that the airport violated the rules of passenger insurance. Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities for transportation insist the airport’s booking offices violated the rights of their customers by making them pay for the accident insurance alongside with the ticket to Moscow. When tickets were sold at the airport’s terminal A, the passengers were not explained that the insurance was optional. This actually

Over 152 cars were stolen and 156 cars were misappropriated in Sverdlovsk Region throughout January 1, 2010 to March 15, 2010. These figures were, respectively, 41.3% and 56.3% lower than those for the year earlier (259 cars and 357 cars, respectively). In about 28.6% of cases, the thieves of the stolen cars were detected (compared with 23.1% in the first two and a half months of 2009); the misappropriated automobiles were found in 57.8% of cases (compared with 54.7% in the first two and a half months of 2009), the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s road police report. Despite the general

General Motors’ newest makes will soon hit Yekaterinburg thanks to OOO Commercial Bank Koltso Urala’s efforts. The bank offered Autobahn-Zapad (GM’s official dealer) an overdraft. The dealer is going to use the money to buy the latest automobile makes, says the bank’s Business Customer Director Ekaterina Nikitina. ‘Cooperating with car dealers is a common thing for our bank. Apart from this particular company, we offer our loans to a few other large local car retailers and thus participate indirectly in the lives of local dwellers, who get a chance to buy the newest models on the market,’ she