The world’s largest online auction e-Bay and a number of other foreign e-shops have started refusing to sell things to Russian customers this week. This happened because the Russian Post stretched its package delivery period from two weeks to two months at the beginning of the year, Newsru.com reports. The rules of PayPal (the system employed to pay for the e-orders) state that the order must be delivered to the customer within thirty days of the purchase; if the seller fails to do so and does not give the customer a refund, his or her e-account could be closed down, the portal explains. The

Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities for transportation looked into the activity of Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport after they had received a multi-authored petition from customers who felt the airport’s booking offices violated their rights when making them pay for the accident insurance alongside with the ticket to Moscow, the spokesperson for the authorities reports. The investigation made it clear that under the agency agreement existing between OAO Voyenno-Strakhovaya Kompaniya (an insurer) and Koltsovo, the airport was to attract customers for the accident insurance

First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government and Economy Minister Mikhail Maksimov chaired a meeting of the regional business support committee on the financial situation at the mid-Ural enterprises and on the actions taken to raise the regional budget’s tax revenues. The top executives of UC RUSAL, Uralvagonzavod, Uralmashzavod, Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise, Gazprom Transgaz Yekaterinburg, and MRSK Urala made some reports on the measures taken at their companies to fight the recession. At the end of the meeting, Mikhail Maksimov asked the heads of these companies

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) inspected nine supermarkets run by OOO Lev (Kirovskiy supermarket chain) and detected some violations of the sanitation-and-epidemiological safety regulations and of consumers’ rights, the spokesperson for Rospotrebnadzor reports. The most common offenses have to do with unsatisfactory sanitary conditions, unaccepted ways of storing foods, ignoring the sell-by date, failing to retain all the price tags with expiry dates on them, lack of control over the quality of pre-prepared foods, sweets, and pastry,

RRG, a consultant company, recently looked into the Russian luxury retail market; the company’s research focused on 272 luxury, premium, and upper middle brands. The agency reports Central Federal District is the most developed one in terms of luxury products’ availability and North-Western Federal District, with its 120 stores, is the second most developed region. RRG explains 62% of all the luxury shops in Russia operate within some shopping mall; as far as Central Federal District is concerned, 73% of luxury shops open within a mall and in Ural and Siberian Federal Districts over 60% of

‘We had to make our Kurgan-based Technosila hypermarket stop operating for the time being, that is, until mid-summer. The thing is, the local market was badly affected by the recession; our shop is located in a new mall where not even 50% of available place has been taken up by tenants, so it’s just economically inexpedient for us to run an outlet there,’ the electronic goods chain’s Vice President for Strategy Leonid Tyukavkin informed UrBC. ‘Under the current circumstances, a halt is a clever thing to do; we do not leave Kurgan market and do not make anyone redundant. We just stop operating

The white goods and consumer electronics chain store intends to halve the number of the hypermarkets run in the Russian regions; the shopping space thus made available will probably be sub-leased in order to cut back on expenses. Unprofitable shops might be closed down altogether, RBC daily reports. Nevertheless, Technosila is still hoping to reduce its spending in some other ways. A few real estate agencies informed RBC daily that the company was going to cut its shopping space in provinces from 4,500 sq m to 2,200 sq m. Technosila did admit it had halved the area of one of its Ryazan-based

The Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation keeps looking into the business activity of Metro Cash & Carry upon its suppliers’ complaint, Kommersant reports. The FAS intends to compare the store’s policies before and after the enactment of the Trade Law and believes Metro might have violated this law. When all the by-laws and provisions come into full effect in the second half of 2010, the Service will check a number of other retailers, Kommersant says. According to Kommersant, the FAS has asked Metro’s suppliers for the copies of delivery agreements for 2008-2009, the

The Russian Federation General Prosecutor’s Office applied to Moroccan law-enforcement authorities, asking for the extradition of Alexei Kalinichenko back to Russia, where the man suspected of setting up a pyramid scheme will have to face a criminal trial, the Office’s PR Director Marina Gridneva said to UrBC. ‘It is too early at the moment to predict just how soon the application will be considered by the Moroccan authorities and what their decision would be,’ Ms Gridneva added. In Russia, Alexei Kalinichenko has been charged with setting up Global Gaming Expo, a financial pyramid, and thus

The Ural division of MTS, one of Russia’s top three mobile operators, confirmed to UrBC that the company was about to relocate its call center from Yekaterinburg to Samara. ‘The project is at the preliminary stage at the moment. We expect the relocation to start in June. Our Yekaterinburg office currently employs excellently trained workers whom we are interested in keeping, which is why MTS will do its best to help those of them who agree to move to Samara adjust to the new place. Those employees who prefer to stay in Yekaterinburg will be offered jobs within the company’s Ural division,

Sverdlovsk Region Federation of Trade Unions won the case regarding the claim laid against METRO Cash & Carry’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary. The defendant was accused of non-compliance with the labor law, and the court ruled that the plaintiff was right and that the notion of ‘minimal guarantees’ for harmful labor conditions did not depend on the degree of harmfulness, the spokesperson for the Federation reports. ‘When Sverdlovsk Region Federation of Trade Unions carried out an all-round inspection of the company’s labor law compliance practices, METRO turned out to violate governmental

‘An educational change is one of the main challenges proposed by the Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev. Without some knowledge upgrades and attempts to bring up a new personality type this country will never grow stable,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin announced at a meeting with the Ural colleges’ students. ‘Sverdlovsk Region has more students here than do many other parts of Russia; however, the creation of Ural Federal University does not mean it is going to absorb all the other local colleges and vocational schools. We’ll have a hierarchy like the rest of the world,’

Moscow Arbitration Court ruled in favor of the decision taken by Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service regarding OAO Concern EnergoAtom, the spokesperson for the FAS reports. The FAS declared that Concern EnergoAtom created preferential terms of tender for ZAO GMZ Khimmash and violated the procedure of determining the tender’s winner. On November 28, 2008, OAO Concern EnergoAtom and ZAO GMZ Khimmash signed an agreement for the production and delivery of air conditioners for Beloyarskaya nuclear power plant’s generating unit No. 4. The agreement was signed after Concern EnergoAtom organized an

УрБК, Екатеринбург, 10.03.2010. «Изменение образования — одна из важнейших задач, поставленных президентом России Дмитрием Медведевым. Без модернизации знаний, без создания, воспитания новой личности страна никогда не будет устойчивой», — заявил губернатор Свердловской области Александр Мишарин в ходе встречи со студентами уральских вузов. «Свердловская область является, пожалуй, одним из самых «студенческих» регионов страны. При этом создание Уральского федерального университета не означает, что он поглотит все вузы и техникумы. Формирование УрФУ значит, что будет вертикаль, как во всем

Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Market Service refused to allow Sverdlovsk Region-based ZAO Sistema Profit Management Company to register an additional issue of ordinary registered non-certificated shares through Order 62-10-294/pz-i issued by the Service’s division on March 2, 2010.

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin looked at the premises of Uralvagonzavod and considered the plant’s development programs during his recent visit to Nizhniy Tagil. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Alexander Misharin was surprised to find out what the plant worker’s average salary was. ‘Why does such a large machine-building plant pays wages that are smaller than the region’s average? Unless you go for a pay rise and introduce a social benefits package, you will have no skilled workforce to hire,’ the Governor said to the plant’s management. ‘Following my visit

‘The bankruptcy proceedings involving OOO Ural Meat-Packing Plant have already begun, but this is more or less a formality. As far as we know, OOO Agroservice has been renting the plant’s premises for about a year now,’ Tatiana Novikova from Yekaterinburg Commodities Market Committee informed UrBC. The opening bid for Ural Meat-Packing Plant (the successor of Yekaterinburg Meat-Packing Plant) has been determined at 6 million RUR. The plant’s representative repots the auction will take place within the next forty-five days. ‘The production has actually been on the rise lately, so OOO

OAO SOGAZ was recently fined for non-compliance with the antimonopoly law. The case started when Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled on September 10, 2009 that OAO SOGAZ had violated Article 11 (part 1, paragraph 5) of the Competition Protection Act. The violation consisted in that the company signed a cooperation agreement and an agency contract with AKB Bank of Moscow, the implementation of which in car loans-issuing process might result or resulted in inflicting disadvantageous terms and conditions upon the borrowing parties. These terms were also

Investing in housing no longer a good idea, FINAM claims ‘Housing prices no longer tend to go up, and we believe they will stay relatively stable throughout this year, even though the trend might change later. In our opinion, however, there are no fundamental price growth-boosting factors at play at the moment,’ says Maxim Klyagin, an analyst from FINAM Investment Company. Meanwhile, OOO Fin-Invest-Stroi, the developer of Admiralskiy housing complex in Yekaterinburg, invited investors to give their money to this project instead of opening bank deposits or heading for the stock market as the

The internal rules and policy of Ufa-based OAO Bank Investment Capital, Moscow-based OOO Perviy Cheshsko-Rossiyskiy Bank, and Perm-based Uralskiy Finansoviy Dom, as well as of a number of other banks, have not been approved of by the Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation so as to counteract laundering proceeds from criminal activity as well as terrorist financing.