A carriage loaded with iron ore derailed at Podvoloshnaya-Pervouralsk railway haul (local division of Sverdlovsk Railway) on August 26, 2006. In order to eliminate the consequences of the accident, all operations on the even rail had to be closed for 4 hours and 17 minutes. The odd rail operated as usual. The recovery operations caused a twenty-one-hour delay of eighteen freight trains and an almost seven-and a half-hour delay of seven passenger trains. To find out the causes of the accident, the expert team had to use special tools to examine the technical condition of the carriages, the

Sales Department of Yekaterinburg Electrical Network Company collected over 5 million RUR following theft reports, says the company’s spokesperson. The department officers carried out 568 investigations of legal entities and found instances of illegal use of electricity in 146 cases. They also found such instances in 67 cases out of 240 investigations of natural persons. Since the beginning of the year, the officers from the Economic Safety Department have managed to retrieve approximately 5 million RUR from previously unregistered users onto the corporate accounts. Such ‘freelance’ users are

Ural Plant of Rubber Technical Goods JSC held extraordinary general meeting that resulted in electing the new Board of Directors: the shareholders elected GD Sergey Zyryanov, First Deputy GD Viktor Sentsov, and Commercial Director Vadim Ovsyannikov. These people are said to have connections with Renova Group. Interboss Holding Ltd. bought some of the company’s shares from Russian Credit Bank of Moscow in July 2006 and now owns a 50.4% share holding. Another 38% are owned publicly (they belong to Russian Federal Property Fund that has already tried selling the holding twice). The remaining 12%

Mechel Bank JSC changed its natural person dollar deposit rates of interest and terms. As the company’s spokesperson said to UrBC representative, the bank raised the interest rates from .5% to 2% for 61-days Vacation deposit, 91-days Vacation deposit, Time deposit, Savings deposit, Pawnbroker deposit, Capital deposit, VIP-Deposit, Specific Child deposit, Retirement deposit, and Your Success deposit. According to the bank employees, this decision was caused by the general trend on the banking services market. The bank has already raised its ruble deposit rates of interest: this happened in

Mineral-Chemical Company EuroChem JSC (Moscow) that deals in agricultural chemical fertilizers has sent Zinc Plant of Chelyabinsk JSC a long-term contract offer. EuroChem management is willing to buy a fixed annual amount of sulfuric acid at a fixed price for the next five years. The approximate annual amount is estimated at 100,000 tons, the spokesperson for PROMASS, the Organization of Employers of Chelyabinsk Region, said to UrBC representative. ‘We have indeed received such an offer, and we are now considering it,’ the press secretary of Zinc Plant of Chelyabinsk Mikhail Bendyak observed.

The village of Severouralsk celebrated Miner’s Day last Sunday. During the ceremony, Production and Strategic Development Director of SUAL Holding Anatoliy Zharov announced on behalf of his company: ‘Our Investment Department considered and approved of SevUralBauxiteRuda development project that provides for faster improvements of Novo-Kalyinskaya mine and construction of Cheremukhovskaya-Deep mine. The project is expected to help this regional ore maker to significantly increase the amount of ore they extract and raise their annual ore output to 4.2 m tons within the nearest seven years.’

Coke JSC borrowed 295m RUR from Ufaleynickel JSC (both companies are part of Industrial Metallurgical Holding Managing Company); the decision to give the money had been approved by the shareholders of Ufaleynickel at the annual general meeting. The transaction was performed on August 25, 2006 and came to 16.47% of the issuer’s assets.

Power generating unit BN-600 was set at nominal capacity after eliminating some defects on August 28, 2006. The power of the unit was first lowered in the evening of August 24, 2006 down to 400 megawatt by switching off one of the reactor three loops. This was done in order to remove the defect in the drain conduit located in a section of the steam generator. The defects in the steam generators do not affect the environment in terms of radiation. The incident was classified as a zero event on the international INES scale, which means the deviation from the norm is not going to influence the

Presentation of the new office of Russian Hotel Association in Sverdlovsk Region will take place in Yekaterinburg on Tuesday, August 29, 2006. The presentation will be attended by the Association’s Executive Director Gennady Lamshin, reports the spokesperson for Vice-Mayor Viktor Konteev. Seven local hotels have joined the Association so far, including the Vis-à-vis, the Iset, the Oktyabrskaya Hotel, the Sverdlovsk, the UralHotel, the Alexandrovskiy Park-Hotel, the Magister, and a vocational school of trade and economics as well. In order to decide whether to join the Association, the hotel

The applications for the open negotiations on rendering the Board of Directors of TGK-9, a power generating company, a service of floating the additional share issue could be placed throughout July 28, 2006 to August 18, 2006. On August 23, 2006, TGK-9 held talks with the representatives of six companies: Troika-Dialog Investment Company CJSC, RosBank JSC, Morgan Stanley and Co. International Ltd, Credit Swiss Securities (Europe) Ltd., Deutsche Bank GmbH, and a bank consortium represented by JPMorgan and GazpromBank CJSC. The selective committee has to decide on the company they will prefer

Due to the company having gone bankrupt, MZHKO, Chelyabinsk-based municipal unitary enterprise, put its accounts receivable (coming from both legal entities and entrepreneurs) worth 253,457.99 RUR (the opening bid is 70,000 RUR) and production vehicles (the opening bid 443,500 RUR). The auction will take place on September 27, 2006.

‘In order to avoid paying the single social tax, the management of Ural car factory JSC made some remuneration payments to its employees for the job they did on the basis of the work contract via Zlatoust subsidiary of RosProm Insurance Company. The payments were recorded in the accounting papers as the monthly insurance allowances that were actually ten times greater than the employees’ insurance contributions. In its turn, RosProm transferred the money into the employees’ bank accounts when they, following the recommendation of the factory management, signed life insurance agreements with

The liquidation committee of Chebarkulstroy holds an open production site -selling auction. They sell a storehouse with the area of 697 square maters and a welding shop with the area of 163.4 square meters, both located on a 2.16-hectare patch of land. The opening bid for the building is 6.5m RUR. The auction will take place on September 26, 2006.

Production site of VIZ Steel JSC caught fire at 11.51 a. m. on August 23, 2006. According to the Department of Emergencies, this was caused by failing to follow the technological requirements of the production process, which resulted in a fire in the 30-meter-long air channel. The total fire area is estimated at 100 square meters; the accident was classified as 1-bis, that is, first-degree complexity. The fire was put out by 35 rescuers with the help of five tank trucks and a ladder. The extent of the damage is currently being ascertained.

As the spokesperson for Bank24.ru said to UrBC representative, Mr Kalinichenko will have to quit his membership in the bank’s Board of Directors in the nearest future, namely, after the extraordinary meeting of the Board. UTG (United FX — Traders Group), one of Russia’s largest bookmaking companies, founded and run by Mr Kalinichenko, was reported to be in a financial crises and unable to make dividend payments to its investors in mid-August. On August 18, 2006, the public prosecution authorities of Yekaterinburg started an investigation of Global Gaming Expo after its clients placed a

The development of electrical networks in Yekaterinburg seems inadequate to meet the growing demands of the rapidly expanding city. Some substations were actually quite overloaded last winter and, if the winter of 2006/2007 proves just as cold (the average of - 30 degrees centigrade), some dwellings, boiling houses, and other socially important buildings may have power cuts, reports the spokesperson for Yekaterinburg Electrical Network Company. One way of preventing these contingencies may be cutting down on electricity supplies to some enterprises for the harshest winter periods. The

TGK-9, territorial generating company, is going to spend 704 million RUR on repairs and 680 million on investment projects in its Yekaterinburg subsidiary in 2006. The company’s technicians and experts started getting ready for the coming winter as early as January 2006, by identifying the amount of work to be done and sources of financing. They have so far repaired six boilers, two turbines, and two generators; they have also replaced 2.2 kilometers of heat networks, and another 60 million RUR is to be spent on repairing the rest of them.

According to Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture Sergey Latskov, Srendeuralskiy Winery Ltd. (part of AVS-Group) still hasn’t got any response to its license application placed in July 2006.

Konstantin Strukov decided to quit his position as the General Director of Chelyabinsk Coal Company, he announced during a press-tour of Korkinskiy section. ‘I have achieved the goals I had to achieve, the company has been operating stably and the management is thinking of ways to develop it further,’ Mr Strukov said. Members of the company’s Board decided to appoint Mr Strukov Chairman and appoint former Technical Director Viktor Baron General Director yesterday.

The regional power engineering industry has bought 1 million tons less coal (a total of approximately 2.850 million tons) from Chelyabinsk Coal Company in 2006, the company’s Chairman Konstantin Strukov announced in the course of a press-tour of Korkinskiy section. According to the Chairman, they will have supplied 350,000 tons of coal by the end of August, yet they have no orders whatsoever for September. ‘This brings us in serious straits,’ Mr Strukov said.