Metallist has already announced that forty-nine people are to be made redundant; in fact, only 225 people had still been employed by March 31, 2009. The company says the personnel cuts have to do with restructuring and the hard times the business is going through. Metallist happens to depend directly on the orders placed by Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR), and there are no orders at all at the moment. SUBR, in its turn, is planning to have six people leave the enterprise, Severouralskiy Employment Center reports. ‘All the people who’ve lost their jobs naturally get registered with the

‘The selection of Andrei Kozlov scholarship finalists is an event aimed at enhancing our students’ career awareness. The more students learn about the options available to them, the better things will be for both the potential finalists and other students. This is a great motivation tool that benefits everyone,’ says Dean of B.N. Yeltsin Ural State Technical University’s Department of Economics and Management Vadim Krivorotov. Six students entitled to Andrei Kozlov Scholarship are to present their financial projects to the scholarship committee on April 15, 2009. The scholarship was

Four of Central Bank of Russia’s plenipotentiary representatives no longer monitor their respective private banks after they have completed their mission and the banks have paid off their collateral-free loans to the Bank of Russia in full. One of these banks is located in Sverdlovsk Region: METCOMBANK has paid off its loan in toto. The Central Bank’s representatives have also been called off from Voronezh-based Agroimpuls, Krasnodar-based Krayinvestbank, and Perm-based Uralskiy Finansoviy Dom.

The net loss of Bank Severnaya Kazna came to 1,240,248,000 RUR in the first quarter of 2009, whereas a quarter earlier, the figures reached 1,524,951,000 RUR.

Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) carried out 1,427 inspections of Vanadium/Kachkanar ore mining and processing enterprise last year. As a result, 6,655 safety violations were revealed, with fifty-five cases when stoppages were required, and 316 employees faced disciplinary liability, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor reports. In addition, heads of the enterprise’s departments were given 452 improvement proposals, all of which were implemented. Nevertheless, some of the

SKB-Bank went through with its first transaction proposed within the framework of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s international trade development program ‘The program is targeted at promoting our foreign trade in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the CIS. The EBRD provides foreign banks with guarantees on behalf of the banks located in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS. SKB-Bank is now one of the businesses to be offered these guarantees,’ the bank’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. ‘It is with the help of SKB-Bank and the EBRD’s support that a new

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is now employing the latest European methods to train its future workers. According to the company’s PR Department, Magnitogorsk Polytechnic College lab is now fitted with educational stands and units identical to those seen in German academies where the future experts for German concerns are trained. This has been made possible due to the grant the college won in the federal education contest in 2007. The college representatives visited Festo Academy in Germany last year to practice using the new equipment and take part in the development seminar on

A production record was set at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) coating shop: the polymeric coating unit produced 18,826 tons of goods instead of the planned 17,000 tons in March 2009. The company’s PR Department explains the unit, launched in the summer of 2004, showed its maximum capacity of the moment in October 2005 when 17,032 tons of goods were produced. Most of the goods produced in March are zinc-coated rolled metal goods with poly coating, of which 16,500 have been delivered on the domestic market and 1,500 tons sold within the CIS. The order portfolio for April comes to

‘There are currently a lot of ways for the state to support this or that investment project. At the same time, the federal authorities will naturally focus on the top priority projects that are important to the entire country’s well-being,’ Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg is now hosting a major multi-faceted area development project known as Academic, invested in by Renova StroyGroup. The projects gets financing from the company itself as well as from the federal, regional, and municipal budgets. The

‘Yekaterinburg’s future Academic district is currently under construction, so people are employed there almost on 24/7 basis. A group of Czech delegates visited the site recently, surprised at seeing the builders start their work as early as 7 AM,’ Deputy Chairman of Sverdlovsk Region Legislation Assembly’s Duma Nail Shaimardanov said to an UrBC reporter. The official reports about 1,000 people were employed at the site at the beginning of 2009, with the figure to rise to 3,000 in the nearest future. This means that Renova StroyGroup, the project investor is creating new jobs, needed so badly

‘Yekaterinburg’s basic financial document needs to be edited now the first quarter of the year is over. About 3.5 billion RUR was paid into the budget in January through March 2009 (which comes to 15% of what was planned for the whole year), and over 5 billion RUR was spent (which comes to 19% of the annual spending figure). The difference was covered for by the last year’s leftovers,’ Head of Yekaterinburg Finance and Budget Administration Andrei Koryukov said at Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma’s Budget Committee meeting. ‘The authorities carried out forty-four inspections last year, producing

‘We’ve had to halt the company’s expansion in the Russian regions because of the current financial crisis. We’ve already got five subsidiaries in Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, and Perm Regions as well as Moscow. We did plan to acquire insurance companies throughout Russia, including those in the Volga Region, Central Federal District, and Saint Petersburg. However, now we think it would be better to stop expanding for the year 2009,’ says Severnaya Kazna Insurance Company’s GD Alexander Merenkov. In the meantime, one of the company’s institutors Vladimir Frolov sold his 52% shareholding to

‘Our top priority at the moment is the structural changes in the country’s economy. We simply cannot afford to keep the ways we’ve got now, as this would make our illnesses chronic. A lot of so-called ‘monocities’ or towns with an only plant that provides all the jobs there are more or less of a development throwback, a problem we’ve inherited from our past,’ Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko said in the course of his visits to Yekaterinburg’s industrial enterprises. ‘Quite often, such towns’ major problems are of social nature rather than those of business restoration and

The welding wire produced by MMK-METIZ (part of MMK Group) has recently been certified for compliance with the existing technical standards. The certification procedure of Sv-08GNM welding wire with the diameter of 4 mm made in accordance with TU 1227-036- 00187240-2006 and TU 14-4-1877-2004 standards was carried out by the experts from Standart-Diagnostika, Magnitogorsk Certification Center. As a result, the enterprise was given the corresponding certificate. The wire is meant for pipe welding, with the product’s main consumers being Russian tube-rolling plants. The wire application is

‘Russia and Italy’s economic relations are totally strategic, which means they are rather long-term ones and based on a very sturdy foundation, including the energy projects. This stable economic cooperation is now moving into a new phase, from the trade to the investment format,’ Russian Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The Minister believes both Russian and Italian partners contribute equally to a number of O&G and the energy sector project in the two countries. ‘One new area where the two parties cooperate is the

‘The Russian Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko and I are currently working on the introduction of free economic zones in Russia, where emphasis would be laid on high technologies and telecommunications. A number of very important agreements to this extent were signed yesterday,’ the Italian Minister for Economic Development Claudio Scaiola announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The Minister reported over eighty representatives of various Italian enterprises were currently touring four Russian cities, including Yekaterinburg, so they were to have over eight hundred

The volume of deposits opened at SKB-Bank by private individuals exceeded 16 billion RUR on April 8, 2009 (compared with 9.9 billion RUR a year earlier). ‘Our Patriot deposit type is definitely enjoying the greatest demand, with over 8.1 billion RUR placed with the bank under this particular deposit, despite the fact that it was only launched in December 2008. The beauty of this deposit type lies in the unique combination of increased income and a short deposit period. One can deposit the minimum of 10,000 RUR, for instance, and enjoy the 17.01% annual interest rate in only a hundred days!’

‘Our negotiations with Metro Cash & Carry’s management have been hard to pull through. They refused to produce a single document without getting their Moscow supervisors’ permission first during the public prosecution authorities’ checks, and the number of papers they did produce at the end of the day was very limited. The checks (made on April 2-3, 2009) made it clear that the company allowed for numerous labor code violations; for one, the employees’ wages haven’t been indexed once, while their working areas were way too cold,’ says Chairman of Sverdlovsk Region Trade Union Federation

URSA Bank won prizes in two categories at the Quality Festival run by Quality Guarantee Center and Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee with its Magnificent Seven deposit offer as the Best Medium-Term Savings Program for Private Individuals and its Savings deposit as the Best Long-Term Savings Program for Private Individuals. The festival is an annual event, targeted at identifying and promoting the best organizations dealing in lending and depositing services to private customer. Besides, the contest is expected to enhance Yekaterinburg-based banks’ competitiveness. ‘URSA Bank has taken

UralBusinessConsulting was informed that Uralvagonzavod’s General Director Nikolai Malykh might soon resign. The whole thing began in March 2009 when President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin criticized the company’s performance bitterly during his visit to Novosibirsk. ‘This enterprise needs to pay more attention to the quality of its produce. There was an accident involving a carriage made in 2007 at East Siberian Railroad only yesterday, which signals very poor quality control and horrid technologies. The plant’s management must learn to run the business properly first and only then