Ural Airlines are going to conduct a presentation of Airbus 320, the Ural Region’s first European aircraft of this kind. The presentation will take place in Koltsovo Airport at 2.30 PM on November 23, 2006. The visitors will be able to have a tour of the flight deck and examine the plane that is capable of travelling, let’s say, from Yekaterinburg to any point in South-East Asia without having to be refuelled. The Russian and foreign experts will be able to answer the visitors’ questions concerning for example, the reason why Airbus 320 was the plane the majority of the world’s leading

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by Credit Ural Bank to natural persons despite overdraft account went down by 43.52% (from 1.197m RUR to 676,000 RUR) in January-September 2006.

Magnesite Group has recently started producing defined-parameters caustic magnesite for special purposes at Magnesite Industrial Complex based in Chelyabinsk Region. This made the company Russia’s first and only producer of caustic magnesite also made in China, Greece, and Spain. The total amount of the Group’s investments in R&D, renovation and upgrading of equipment, and introduction of the new technology amounted to 245m RUR. The throughput of the new facility is expected to come to 90,000 tons per annum. This kind of magnesite is mainly used by large European enterprises involved in

‘The amount of landline calls to our mobile phone users has been smoothly going up lately, just as was predicted, even though there was the initial 40% drop in public telephone network traffic due to the introduction of Calling Party Pays scheme. In October, for example, the amount of landline calls to MegaFon subscribers went up by 9% compared with September 2006. Expectedly, the amount of ‘intranet’ calls as well as that of calls from other GSM operators is increasing’, the Commercial Director of one of Russia’s largest mobile operators MegaFon Ural Andrei Ibragimov said to UrBC

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralTransBank to sole traders for a term of up to 30 days went down by 24.4% (from 44.096m RUR to 33.313m RUR) in January-October 2006.

The automated banking system of Severnaya Kazna, the local bank, was not accessible for a few hours in the morning of November 20, 2006. According to the bank’s clients who witnessed the software acting up, this breakdown made it impossible to render banking services in any of the offices of Severnaya Kazna located in Yekaterinburg; there were some delays in e-banking payments as well, and the statements of an account were unavailable. Yet the bank’s press officer claims that the bank never stopped servicing its clients and the problem was fixed by noon. The damage suffered by the bank and

‘The supply on existing home market of Yekaterinburg is going to increase by 5% to 10% in the nearest future,’ says the spokesperson for the Analytical Department of Ural Chamber of Real Estate. Their experts say that despite the increasing amount of all kinds of housing becoming available, the situation on the market is still close to fuss; yet there are some goods trends as well, for example, it is now possible to take more time (on average) to sell or buy a dwelling (the figure dropped from 35 to 40 days in the summer to 45 days in October 2006). ‘Most likely, the pace at which the prices

Rossvyaznadzor, the telecommunication authority, gave Ural Phone Company the permission to use local landlines on November 17, 2006. Prior to this, these services were only rendered by two operators (UralSvyazInform and European-Asian Pipes Ltd.) The landline operator services international and long-distance calls as well as local calls and deals in area exchange among different parts of Sverdlovsk Region.

Evraz, the Russian enterprise, is going to acquire Oregon Steel Mills Inc., the American metallurgical company, at $2.3bn. According to the report of Evraz Group, the two parties have agreed that Evraz would buy the shares of their American partner at $63.25 per share. This price covers the 22.3% premium on the average three months’ market price, or 30.3% on the average one-year’s price. Evraz Group has earlier announced that it was expecting to add some new assets to the ones it has already got in Czech Republic and Italy. Oregon Steel made $127.9m of net profit and $1.13bn worth of revenues

106bn RUR will be invested in the production facilities of Territorial Power Generating Company 9 (aka TGK-9) before 2015, says the report based on the results of the Board’s meeting. The company’s top priority projects are the construction of Novo-Bereznikovskaya power station (the project is estimated to cost 14.3bn RUR) and reconstruction of Permskaya power station (the project will cost 3.8bn RUR). The money is expected to be derived from the profit obtained as a result of the company’s performance as well as depreciation funds and loans. Besides, the company is planning to use money

Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) has bought over 9,000 portions of flu vaccines in order to prevent an epidemic. According to the special schedule, every third employee of the company will have been vaccinated within two or three weeks’ time, which is believed to prevent the massive outbreaks of the disease. The medical staff are using Vacigripp made by Sanofi Paster of France; this vaccine has already proved to be quite effective during the earlier epidemic seasons. The vaccine has been delivered to all of the company’s 26 medical aid posts, and the

Severnaya Kazna Insurance Company paid 126,459,000 RUR to its clients in the first quarter of 2006 (compared with 121,470,000 RUR in the fourth quarter of 2005), the company’s spokesperson said to UrBC representative. The degree of damage sustained by the company in terms of voluntary insurance and obligatory car insurance came to 72.67% and 99.16%, respectively (compared with 61.05% and 71.44% in the fourth quarter of 2005). The company collected 152,555,000 RUR in the form of insurance payments in the first quarter of 2006.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralTransBank to sole traders despite overdraft account for a term of 91 to 180 days has gone down by 28.6% (from 80.227m RUR to 57.262m RUR) in January-October 2006.

A fire broke out at the building materials warehouse 38 belonging to Oboronsnabsbyt JSC, Yekaterinburg-based defense business, says the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Department of Emergencies. The fire started at about 1 AM on November 19, 2006. Nineteen firefighting vehicles were sent to deal with the accident at once, with the fire graded as having the second-degree difficulty. According to the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Department of Emergencies, the stuffs burning were actually the finishing agents. The fire was put out before 1 AM on November 20, 2006; the damage has yet to

The first Airbus 320 arrived in Yekaterinburg at 12.08 PM last Saturday. Despite the heavy snowfall and the wind, the landing went smoothly, performed by the crew of Ural Airlines (Captain Dmitriy Sherbakov). Among the other professionals on board was the instructor Andrey Bogatyrev, the squadron leader of Aeroflot Russian Airlines; this first flight lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes. The long-awaited airplane was welcomed by the representatives of Ural Airlines headed by the General Director Sergey Skuratov, who was the first person to get on board the plane. ‘This is not simply the first

Ural Fund is going to have its second extraordinary shareholder meeting on December 7, 2006. The points on the agenda include electing the returning board and the Board of Directors.

Ural Turbine Plant, a closed joint-stock company, is going to set up a power machine building holding, announced the company’s General Director Vitaliy Nedelskiy. Mr Nedelskiy says the holding will be originally organized as a consortium, founded by Ural Turbine Plant, Teploenergoservice EC Power Equipment Repair Corporation of Moscow, and ElSib, a joint-stock company from Novosibirsk. According to the other participants of the project, the consortium might then be converted into a joint stock company that will deal in collecting orders for steam-and-gas turbine production and the order

A special committee made up of the representatives of the Federal Air Transport Agency, Koltsovo airport, and Ural Airlines, accompanied by the experts from the transportation prosecution bodies, has completed its mission. Having looked at the capacity of the air terminal for domestic flights and at the feasibility of servicing them, especially the Moscow-bound ones, the committee concluded that Koltsovo was technically capable of servicing the planes of Ural Airlines, including the so-called historic slots of morning and evening flights to Moscow. As regards the ‘repair’ that the airport

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of investments placed by non-resident legal entities in UralTransBank for a term of over three years has gone down by 27.6% (from 34,265,000 RUR to 24,796,000 RUR) over the ten months of 2006.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of deposits and other investments placed by non-resident natural persons in UralTransBank for a term of 1 to 3 years has gone down by 25.5% (from 4.082m RUR to 3.041m RUR) in January-October 2006.