‘The problems Ural Tire Plant has been experiencing are only getting worse. There are some reasons for this, too: Russian car factories are working less and making people redundant, so they need fewer tires now. The only way out is for the plant to follow suit, that is, to stop producing goods that don’t enjoy demand and to have some layoffs,’ SIBUR-Russian Tires Corporate Communications Department said to UrBC. ‘The company is, in fact, forced to make this decision. If we don’t launch stoppages and layoffs now, the short-term socio-economic consequences will be much more serious, SIBUR

‘X5 Retail Group’s Ural branch is planning to set up Carousel supermarket in KomsoMall Trade & Entertainment Center, but this will only happen in 2010 because of the problems the developer is having at the moment. In fact, DVI Holding started having a hard time as early as last spring, so in May 2009, they warned us about these difficulties,’ Director of X5 Retail Group’s Ural branch’s Alexei Krasnikov reports. In the meantime, the mall’s developer DVI Ural is now undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. ‘Despite the developer’s recent bankruptcy, X5 isn’t going to give up on its plans. After

West Siberian Iron & Steel Plant (Evras Holding member) will have to make 1,000 people redundant on October 1, 2009. This amounts to over 6% of the staff, most of whom will be people well into their retirement age. Evraz Holding intends to provide them with the redundancy package, however. This will include incidental allowances ranging from 90,000 RUR to 200,000 RUR per worker,’ Governor of Kemerov Region Aman Tuleev was recently quoted as saying by RBC Daily. Meanwhile, Evraz announced early in September 2009 that its enterprises went back to their full production capacity and needed

Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of Alfa-Bank) is going to introduce new service rates on October 6, 2009. The changes will affect services rendered to legal entities, sole traders, and self-employed private individuals. This news has been announced via the bank’s official website. For one, the bank will now charge a commission for the administration of accounts that have remained unused for a certain period of time. For instance, a commission of 5,500 RUR will be charged if a ruble settlement account that hasn’t been used for any transactions for a while. The commission charged for an unused

‘We have to sell 3.6 billion RUR worth of goods this year, which is, in fact, not a big figure for a company like Uralmashzavod. To keep the plant working, we actually need to sell twice as much. Next year, provided our sales departments prove more efficient, our sales will probably go up one and a half times or will even double,’ Uralmashzavod’s General Director Oleg Danchenko said in his interview to Za Tyazheloye Mashinostroyeniye. ‘The company produced 167 million RUR worth of goods and sold 240 million RUR worth of produce in July 2009. However, our main problem is the lack of orders and

Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities for transportation examined Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport’s compliance with the municipal development legislation and with the runway safety regulation in August 2009. It was detected that the airport’s general contractor employed for the reconstruction of the runway strip had failed to provide the authorities with the papers necessary to prove their compliance with all the technical requirements. Therefore the runway could not be officially commissioned, the spokesperson for the prosecution authorities reports. Koltsovo Airport’s

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin received a thank-you cablegram from President of the Republic of Bashkortostan Murtaza Rakhimov. ‘The Bashkortostan delegation’s visit to Chelyabinsk Region on September 10, 2009 was a very important step for the development of the two regions’ partnership,’ the cablegram said. ‘I’m positive the implementation of our Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological, Social, and Cultural Cooperation Agreement will make the respective state authorities, organizations, and businesses’ interaction more efficient,’ Rakhimov observed. The Bashkortostan officials

Ford Motor Company announced the names of their new Yekaterinburg dealers. These are going to be Okami and Avtosan car centers. Prior to this, the only dealer the car manufacturer had in Yekaterinburg was Avtoland Holding. In fact, Ford Motor Company and Okami had signed a protocol of intent earlier. As for Avtosan, the two companies have been negotiating over a similar protocol lately. Ford Motor Company officially declared the start of the dealer tender in Yekaterinburg in August 2009. It was then rumored that Avtosan could become one of the company’s local dealers, but the show room was

Yuveliry Urala, the jewelry business, report their sales have nosedived recently, which led to a 30% drop in net profit. For one, the company’s net profit reached 4.9 million RUR in the first quarter of 2009 but only 3.42 million RUR in the second quarter of the year.

Ural Airlines has recently acquired one more Airbus А321 plane which is to become the company’s second A 321 aircraft now. In addition to these planes, the carrier is also operating ten A 320 aircraft as well as a number of domestically produced ones. The airline’s latest acquisition was earlier used by Kibris Turk Hava Yollari; this is a 198-seat airplane, with 16 business class seats and 182 economy class ones. The Airbus airplanes are being used on operating lease for the time being, but Ural Airlines will start getting brand new aircraft in just a few years. The airline and the plane

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin took part in the recent Greater Urals Interregional Association for Economic Cooperation’s meeting in Yekaterinburg. In his speech, the Governor gave his vision of how the Association could help overcome the recession as quickly as possible, reminding the listeners of its success in the early nineties when Russia was fighting another crisis. Sumin said the Ural regions needed an action plan aimed at a fast and painless economic recovery through the banking sector development and tax relief for businesses willing to invest in upgrades and energy-saving

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin took part in the recent Greater Urals Interregional Association for Economic Cooperation’s meeting in Yekaterinburg. In his speech, the Governor gave his vision of how the Association could help overcome the recession as quickly as possible, reminding the listeners of its success in the early nineties when Russia was fighting another crisis. Sumin said the Ural regions needed an action plan aimed at a fast and painless economic recovery through the banking sector development and tax relief for businesses willing to invest in upgrades and energy-saving

Sky Express Airlines transferred 701,220 passengers in January-August 2009, which was 2.1% less than in January-August 2008. Then, the carrier’s passenger load factor rose by 7.5% in comparison with the year earlier and came to 70.4%, which was actually a bit better than the Russian airline industry’s average indicators.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the local construction and assembling management department’s bankruptcy case. The department No 115 placed its insolvency application with the court on June 30, 2009. Then, Tsentr Metalla placed a claim against the company on July 23, 2009, insisting that the defendant should be declared bankrupt. Given that the department was the first to apply for bankruptcy, the court though it best to unite both cases into a single file. The court hearing has been scheduled for September 21, 2009.

Ural Tire Plant’s production output dropped by 77.5% in the first half of the year against a year earlier, thus making the company a loss-making one,’ the plant’s General Director Maxim Yarmak announced at Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Industry and Science crisis-defying committee’s meeting. ‘So now the plant’s workers keep writing letters to the Russian Federation President and Sverdlovsk Region Government, asking to look into the grave situation at the enterprise,’ he added.

Avtoland Holding no longer operates show rooms in Novosibirsk, Continent-Siberia business portal reports. ‘The company’s car shows are closed, no one answers the phone, and the dealer is getting ready to leave the premises rented from Uralchermetavto (Avtoland Holding’s affiliated company). According to Yekaterinburg-based Avtoland Holding’s representative Svetlana Petrovikh, they are now busy taking inventory of all the property and stock; this is to be completed by September 25,2009, however,’ the portal quotes the company representative as saying. ‘The company owes a lot of money to a

Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of Alfa-Bank) announced they were going to raise most of their service fees on October 1, 2009. This rise will affect services rendered to legal entities, sole traders, and self-employed private individuals. As a matter of fact, the bank also modified the terms of its writing-off transactions as early as September 15, 2009. The money is now transferred from the bank account to the necessary destination only the day after the invoice documents have been placed with the bank. Finally, Bank Severnaya Kazna will stop providing its customers with e-banking services

Aeroflot Russian Airlines’ PR Department recently announced 2,000 upcoming job losses. ‘The redundancies are primarily targeted at improving labor productivity and introducing pay rises for both our pilots and managers,’ the PR Department says. The airline reports they will fire some of the administrative-and-managerial staff, namely, about 600 people. Then, over 1,300 cleaners, janitors, cloak room attendants, elevator operators, and drivers will also have to leave the company. Of the two thousand people to be made redundant, 592 workers have reached retirement age.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to consider the claim laid by Rezh rolled metal products plant against Impuls-Stroy this week, the spokesperson for the court reports. The plaintiff took legal action in the hope of getting 263,778,965.28 RUR for the supply of ferrotitanium delivered to Impuls-Stroy in accordance with agreement 01/04-05 signed on April 15, 2004. This Rezh manufacturer deals in production and gross sales of rolled metal goods.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps considering the claim laid by Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Public Property Management against OOO Metalline. Apparently, the defendant was to restore some historically important buildings at 51A and 53A Rosa Luxemburg St. in accordance with the Ministry’s project. Sverdlovsk Region Ministry of Culture and the City of Yekaterinburg are involved in the suit as third parties. As a matter of fact, Onegin Plaza Business Center was put up by Metalline at 49 Rosa Luxemburg St., very close to the buildings in question. The company, whose business activity