Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) section iron division’s enterprises, which were united under OOO NLMK-Sort’s management in December 2009, produced 1.7 million tons of steel in 2009. This was 11% less than in 2008. Also, the enterprises sold 1 million tons of reinforcing bar to their customers, which was 5.7% less than in the year 2008. On the other hand, the sales of wire rod were up 1.2% last year compared to the year before and amounted to 68,000 tons. The sales of metal products also increased by 29% in 2009 compared to 2008, reaching 188,000 tons. However, the amount of steel

Microsoft once again came up with the findings of its piracy monitoring research involving retail computer stores in Russian provinces. According to these findings, about a quarter of the 2,500 outlets inspected (all of which are located in fifty-three different cities of Russia) offer unlicensed software for sale in one way or another. 11% of the stores inspected offer their customers pre-installed pirated software. Microsoft reports that, despite the general decrease in the supply of counterfeits (from 63% of the total market volume in September 2009 down to 30% in November and December

‘This year has already seen a certain revival of the local automobile market. We haven’t got any shortage thanks to the company’s shipping volumes and working policies. However, it’s true of Yekaterinburg’s car market as a whole that there might be not enough expensive cars for customers to buy,’ OOO Mercedez Benz official dealer Delta Center’s Sales Manager Andrei Yurtanov said to UrBC. ‘The demand did go down a bit, even though we have regular customers and special policies. Our statistical data is based on incidental sales rather than a big customer flow, but, all in all, our sales volumes

‘We haven’t got any information regarding Alexei Kalinichenko’s extradition from Morocco yet. But we have been keeping a very close eye on the development of affairs,’ the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s Department of Internal Affairs Main Administration told UrBC. Alexei Kalinichenko is suspected of setting up a pyramid scheme in Russia through a company called Global Gaming Expo. He is accused of stealing over 1 billion RUR from 4,000 Russian citizens. The businessman was earlier detained in Italy, so the Russian authorities insisted on is extradition. The Italian court ruled in

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin met Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Latvia to the Russian Federation Edgars Skuja. The two officials discussed the ways in which the two territories could cooperate. For one, they saw some good opportunities for machine-building development through joint small and medium ventures. Governor Misharin asked the region’s Minister for Trade, Food, and Services Dmitriy Nozhenko to find the way of working with the Latvian suppliers directly, without any intermediaries. He also said that UMMC Holding was a great

A customer of Bank24.ru was faced with a number of problems when trying to open and then to close a deposit through the bank’s e-system. The incident was described on one of Yekaterinburg’s popular forums. To start with, the bank took a very long time considering the customer’s application. In fact, it took the bank a week instead of the declared two days. Closing the deposit when its term expired was also a problem. The customer reports the bank was to have closed the deposit and to have paid the interest on February 2, 2010. However, this never happened. On February 3, 2010, the customer

The Russian Federation Ministry for Industry and Trade came up with the list of car makes that are liable to recycling under the new stimulus program. The program is expected to boost the sales of new cars through recycling the old ones. Every Russian citizen who recycles an automobile which is over ten years old is given a 50,000-ruble discount by a dealer in case he or she buys a car produced in Russia (and this has to be one of the cars on the list in question). The Russian Federation Government allocated over 11 billion RUR for the program implementation. The program is to be launched on

FINAM Investment Company decreased its target price assessment of OAO FSK EES’s ordinary shares from $.0.0193 down to $0.0135. This is the company’s forecast for the end of 2010. Nevertheless, FINAM still recommends buying the electricity provider’s shares. FINAM actually decided to reconsider the target price after the Federal Tariff Service confirmed the parameters which FSK EES is to use when switching to RAB-based tariff design, and also because the company’s management came up with some new financial forecasts.

Kirovskiy supermarket chain recently closed down two stores at 16 Lenin Ave. and at 62 Lenin Ave. in Yekaterinburg, the chain’s press officer Olga Nagibina said to an UrBC reporter. ‘As it happens, we own about 98% of all our shopping space, but a little bit is rented. The building at 16 Lenin Ave. belonged to two different proprietors, one of whom decided to sell his bit. So we did not think it would be expedient to renew our lease,’ she explained. ‘As for the store at 62 Lenin Ave, some technical examinations made it clear as early as December 2009 that the rented building was not in good

‘We can currently offer our customers only a limited number of last year’s models because the distributor does not supply us with the amount the market needs. The production of cars was reduced at the end of 2009, as it was feared the unstable economic situation could affect the customers’ purchasing power badly, so the car manufacturer might suffer from overstocking. As a result, these wrong forecasts have led to shortage, with the demand outgrowing the supply,’ says Head of Toyota Center Yekaterinburg Zapad’s Sales Department Sergey Nosov. ‘Ironically, some of the most popular cars at the

‘We have been witnessing some revival of Yekaterinburg car market lately. For one, customers are once again interested in expensive makes. Subaru has just come up with a new and quite high-priced model that is already so popular that we have a shortage. Our customers find themselves having to wait for two or three months before these popular makes arrive,’ Head of OOO Subaru Center Yekaterinburg Yug’s Sales Department Sergey Mankevitch told UrBC. OOO Subaru Center Yekaterinburg Yug is Subaru’s official dealer in Yekaterinburg. ‘Making plans and coming up with forecasts for this year’s

The public activists of Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region, are currently collecting signature for the petition to the Russian Federation Public Prosecutor’s Office and the President of the Russian Federation Dmitriy Medvedev’s Administration that calls for looking into the business activity of Russian Standard Bank. The petition was designed by Nizhniy Tagil branch of Russia’s Young Lawyers, a pressure group. The branch’s head Evgeniy Ryakin says they have been getting plenty of complaints regarding the methods the bank in question employs to collect loan debt. What is more, the lawyers

The representatives of Sverdlovsk Region division and Revdinskiy and Nizhneserginskiy departments of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) carried out a scheduled field check of Nizhneserginskiy metal goods plant (NLMK Group’s member). The inspection detected a number of grave health legislation offenses, all of which were related to sanitary arrangements aimed at making the working conditions better and safer. The plant’s recent reconstruction that brought about some new production technologies was assumed to have improved the employees’ labor conditions. However, the

‘We are currently looking into a case involving the local taxi companies; the offense consists in violating the existing advertising laws. In this case, the companies have been declared guilty. We are also considering the question of whether Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport legally carried out a tender and selected Taxi-Gorod as ‘the airport’s exclusive hauler’,’ Head of Sverdlovsk Region division of the Russian Federation Federal Antimonopoly Service Tatiana Kolotova said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘Following the tender, Taxi-Gorod was given a special parking lot on the

It was discovered that VUZ-Bank (Life Financial Group) violated the regulations related to informational transparency on the stock market. This is why Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation ruled that VUZ-Bank would have to face administrative liability and pay a fine. The fine comes to 700,000 RUR.

ERGO Rus (an insurance company and member of the German ERGO Group) decided to stop signing new voluntary medical insurance contracts for the time being. ‘The current risks on the Russian medical services market and the state of the Russian laws won’t give an insurer a chance to work efficiently and offer the customers high quality service comparable with the European insurance standards,’ the company explains. ERGO Rus declared, however, that it could guarantee full compliance with all the obligations resulting from the already existing agreements. The company operates its subsidiaries in

A verdict of ‘guilty’ was pronounced upon the head of TOO AstanaEnergoPromStroy & Co Adkham Mirsogatov, who is believed to allow the completion of the building and assembly jobs at the fourth power-generating unit of Beloyarskaya nuclear plant in Sverdlovsk Region without a license, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities reports. Zarechniy district court considered the evidence provided by the public prosecutor from Beloyarskiy district’s prosecution department and decided that Adkham Mirsogatov, who was the General Director of AstanaEnergoPromStroy &

‘Our sales decreased a little bit in September-December 2009, but they started to reach the earlier volumes in January 2010,’ Director of Frey Wille’s Yekaterinburg branch Larissa Kuyantseva said to UrBC. ‘Speaking of last year as a whole, we can definitely say the economic recession did not affect our jewellery shop. Moreover, we did not experience any serious selling difficulties until September 2009. Frey Wille even expanded its business in October 2009 by trying to reach a new audience: namely, we set up a new shop in Europe Trade & Business Center,’ Kuyantseva added. ‘This business

The Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation declared that the issue of E.S.Yalamov Ural Optical & Mechanical Plant’s certified inconvertible interest-bearing bonds (state serial number 4-02-00002-Т as of December 18, 2008) must be halted for the time being. The news has been announced via the Service’s official website.

Reftinskaya state district power plant is a major air and water polluter, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin said while visiting the plant’s premises. ‘To grow greener, the plant needs to switch from the coal produced in Ekibastuz to that made in Kuzbass: this will decrease the amount of harmful emissions by about 30% to 40% as well as make the plant’s performance more efficient. Only 1 million out of 11 million tons used by Reftinskaya to produce electricity last year was actually delivered from Kuznetsk basin last year. However, it is essential that the plant uses at least 4