The name of the General Director of TGK-9, the power generating company, will be announced in the very near future. The Board meeting held in absentia took place on September 12, 2006; the points on the agenda concerned early leave of current GD Valeriy Rodin and appointing former Deputy GD for Sales Andrey Makarov. The votes are currently being counted. The Board of Directors also considered signing an agreement with Morgan Stanley and Co. International Limited Consortium and Troika Dialog Investment Company concerning rendering services in the field of floating an additional stock issue.

Technicians of Kazskiy subsidiary of Evrazruda JSC (part of Evraz Group) began a 51-day overhaul targeted at replacing the No. 2 winder drum at their Main groove. This operation is quite unique, since this is the first time in the experience of Evrazruda when the company’s workers replace such a huge worn-out apparatus. One shaft of the drum alone weighs 34 tons and its body 70 tons, with the diameter of the drum coming to 5 meters. Novokuznetsk Ltd. has been employed as the general contractor for the project; Evrazruda also used the labour force of its Kazskiy subsidiary; as for the

Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) set up a special environmental monitoring committee that should be supervising the way the company obeys the conservation laws and preventing possible offenses. The committee is made up of the executives from the company’s Environmental, Legal, and Economic Departments. This week, they are going to ask for data from all of the other departments that have to do with (lack of) offenses of conservation laws, the reasons for violations and preventive steps taken to avoid them in future. These data analysis should provide a

As Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Provision Sergey Latzkov said to UrBC representative, the property of Yekaterinburg Distillery Ltd. is now managed by Ural Commerce and Industry Company Ltd. The distillery was actually transformed into a new legal entity. ‘Ural Commerce and Industry Company has already got a license yet it cannot start operating until is has its new formula officially approved of. The company claims to be producing 100 to 200 decalitres a month soon,’ Mr Latzkov said. He also noted that the company would be using the well-established brands of Yekaterinburg Distillery as

This August, Magnesite Industrial Complex (part of Magnesite Group) has produced 31,200 tons of refractory goods, which exceeds the figures for last August by 6.7%. The commercial powders output also went up by 9.6% and came to 67,900 tons. ‘We had somewhat unusual orders last month, for example, a large number of orders for cement goods supplies. All of the company’s shops kept performing well and achieved the target figures,’ said Production Management Director B. Ponomarev.

South Ural subsidiary of Raiffeisenbank Austria introduced the new seller-paying scheme for mortgages in September 2006. According to their spokesperson, now the whole amount indicated in the purchase and sale agreement (including the loan money) can be transmitted to the seller after producing written notice of placing the application with the chamber of real estate. This means the clients are now offered a wider range of dwellings to choose from and buy on a mortgage. The management of South Ural believes that this is particularly important in the circumstances when the demand for the

Boris Diakonov was appointed Chairman of Bank24.ru at the general shareholder meeting on September 13, 2006. ‘It makes sense to choose a shareholder with the second largest holding for the position,’ said Chairman of Management Board Sergey Lapshin. The Board of Directors now consists of Mr Lapshin, Independent Director Paul Goncharoff, and Counselors of Chairman of Management Board T. V. Pakulina and Yu. V. Petrovskiy, reports the spokesperson for the bank.

‘There is no doubt that this hypermarket is going to be popular with customers, especially at the beginning. Yet whether they will come back afterwards remains to be seen, given in particular the store’s whereabouts. Auchan isn’t located downtown, so it’s questionable whether the residents of Yekaterinburg will be visiting the place on regular basis,’ said Chairman of Alliance Independent Partnership Alexei Podolyako.

The amount of criminal lawsuits involving copyright violation has increased by fourfold this year (compared to 2005). Thus, the figure soared from 19 cases in the first half of 2005 to 80 cases in the first half of 2006. Following the applications from representatives of Microsoft, AutoDesk, and Adobe that claimed that some production and design offices might be using illegal copies of their copyrighted software, the public prosecution authorities of Sverdlovsk Region carried out a number of inquiries. These inquiries revealed that the offense did take place. The computers of one production

As the spokesperson for the Court of Noviy Urengoi said to UrBC representative, the court proceedings concerning the arrears of wages at SevTyumenTransPut would be resumed at 10 AM today. The case of Chairman of EuroGreen and former CEO of SevTyumenTransPut Ilya Gaffner, who is charged with failing to pay 47m RUR worth of wages to employees of SevTyumenTransPut, began yesterday. The public prosecution authorities that have been dealing with the inquiry believe that Mr Gaffner transmitted the money into the accounts of a number of Yekaterinburg firms. Should he be proved guilty, Mr Gaffner may

According to the spokesperson for the airport Yulia Fedotova, three Yekaterinburg-Moscow flights were delayed yesterday due to a bomb alarm. Ms Fedotova explained that the special service agents completed searching at 7 PM yesterday; the bomb wasn’t found, so the delayed planes eventually took off.

TGK-9, the local generating company, will start supplying heat to consumers after the municipal councils sign decrees on the beginning of the heating season, reports the company’s spokesperson. These documents are expected to be signed on September 15, and the first buildings to receive heat will be hospitals, schools, kindergartens and day care centers. In the meantime, the company’s experts say that the regional consumers owe the company 562m RUR, with Yekaterinburg’s largest communal facilities operators owing 227m RUR for the heat they’ve received. The bad debtors list includes operators

The court session concerning the claim laid by Starwood Trading Ltd. of the UK against Metallurgical Works of Zlatoust took place in Chelyabinsk Region Court of Arbitration on September 12, 2006. ‘The judge decided to involve the third party yesterday; this is the director of the Bahamas offshore zone; the works was using him to conduct most of its transactions. The assistant to the judge is now trying to get in touch with this person who is allegedly in Chelyabinsk at the moment,’ said the spokesperson for Sovetnik Ltd., the legal representative of the British company. Starwood Trading Ltd.

For two weeks, Stankomash, an industrial enterprise located in Chelyabinsk Region, has only been getting emergency power supply as its debt to ChelyabEnergoSbyt, the supplier, came to 7.8m RUR on September 1, 2006. The negotiations between the tow companies resulted in a compromise, the spokesperson for ChelyabEnergoSbyt said to UrBC representative. The management of Stankomash guaranteed the payment of debts by giving the supplier a schedule of payments and a promise made by the director of the works in person. ChelyabEnergoSbyt decided to start supplying the company with electricity in

Ural Turbine Works (part of Renova Group) is going to make the first K-63-90 condensing turbine next year. The turbine is meant solely for electricity generating and will be installed at the power station of Sokolovskiy-Sarbaiskiy ore mining and processing enterprise in Rudnniy, Kazakhstan. The corresponding contract is to be signed at the end of September. Lonas Technology of Saint Petersburg and UralEnergoRemont became the developer and the general contractor of the project, respectively. ‘Ural experts used to deal in cogeneration turbines only, but now the market demands more flexibility,

According to the Minister for International and Foreign Economic Relations of Sverdlovsk Region Viktor Koksharov, the residents of Sverdlovsk Region will be able to obtain Schengen visas in the German consulate located in Yekaterinburg starting this December. Mr Koksharov said that the consulate was currently waiting for the visa-issuing equipment to arrive from Germany. Russian citizens from the other regions will only be able to get visas after the consulate, situated in Atrium Palace Hotel at the moment, moves to its new building.

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank keeps improving mortgage lending terms; one of the improvements has been signified by the introduction of a new mortgage program called My House 2. This program allows a client with 30% of the cost of their would-be dwelling and with the preliminary purchase and sale agreement to get a mortgage of up to 15m RUR for a term of up to 15 years that they can use to have a cottage of their choice constructed for them. Collaterals or sponsorships are not required. The bank has also introduced a differentiated interest rate for the program called My House, and it now

The NIS and Russia’s leading refractory goods manufacturer, Magnesite Group has recently started developing Goluboye field in Krasnoyarsk Region (the village of Razdolinsk). The mining operations began in late August, with industrial extraction and shipments scheduled for the end of 2006 or the beginning of 2007. The explored reserves of Goluboye deposit come to 15.5m tons, yet the amount may turn out to be larger after additional exploration work is done. The estimated throughput of the pit is 200,000 tons of raw magnesite a year. According to the Group experts, this output will have been

The retail electric power market, previously operating on the basis of general legislative acts (the Power Industry Act and some others), now has a special set of norms called Retail Market Regulations, the spokesperson for ChelyabEnergoSbyt, the regional supplier, said to UrBC representative. The main thing about these Regulations is setting up the institute of guaranteeing suppliers. The guaranteeing supplier status is obtained by the company that has no right to refuse any client wishing to use their electricity supplying services. Thus the state ensures reliable energy supply and gives

UralNefteProduct, the regional subsidiary of LUKOIL, has recently announced that it is going to raise the retail oil prices on September 12, 2006. As the company’s spokesperson said to UrBC representative, AI-76 petrol is now .5 RUR more expensive and costs 15.5 rather than 15 RUR per liter, AI-92 is sold at 18.8 instead of at 17.8 RUR, AI-95 and AI-98 are now both 1 RUR more expensive (20.3 and 20.5 RUR, respectively). Diesel fuel seems to have remained almost unaffected: the price per liter only went up by .1 RUR and reached the point of 17.6 RUR. The price of a ton of diesel fuel has been