AmCham St. Petersburg News

• Sep 29, 2010 3rd St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum

  The 3rd St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum will be held on September 29 – October 1, 2010.

• Jul 30, 2010 AmCham Servers Down On Weekend
  For technical reasons, AmCham servers will be down from 4 p.m. Friday, July 30 till 9 a.m. Monday, August 2 (Moscow Daylight Saving Time). Within this period of time, you may experience problems with accessing our Website and/or sending emails to our addresses. Please accept our apologies and return to the Website and/or resend your emails when the servers are back on. Thank you.
• Jul 29, 2010 AmCham Working Hours in August
  Starting from today till August 31 inclusive, AmCham office hours are 9 a.m. till 4 p.m. (Moscow Daylight Saving Time) Monday through Friday.
• Jul 22, 2010 HR Committee meeting
• Jul 20, 2010 Environment, Health & Safety Committee Meeting
  9:00
  AmCham office
• Jul 03, 2010 U.S. Independence Day celebration

  

• Jul 01, 2010 Customs Union Launches
  On July 1, the Customs Union comes in existence, bringing many novelties to customs rules, norms and procedures, many of which missing yet. We distribute the attached documents (Russian only) for your information and continue thoroughly monitoring the situation — please inform us of any developments...
• Jul 01, 2010 Round-Table “Pharma cluster in St. Petesburg”
  Evgeny I. ELIN, chairman, St. Petersburg Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy & Trade, and Zakhar M. GOLANT, deputy chairman, St. Petersburg Committee for Health Care, presented to AmCham Investment & Legal Committee members prospects of pharmaceutical cluster development in St. Petersburg.
• Jun 23, 2010 Environment, Health & Safety Committee meeting
  The Environment, Health & Safety Committee spoke about practical and legal issues of waste water dumping. Committee members collected information on issues demanding resolving to provide it to relevant authorities for further work.
• Jun 22, 2010 IT Committee meeting
  IT Committee followed up the issue raised at the joint IT & Tax committees meeting on June 1, with a round-table discussion on cooperation between businesses and universities — legal and financial aspects. Major issues from the business side were presented by Tatiana Nikulina, EMC. From the education side, Alexander Rechinsky, St. Petersburg Polytechnic University vice rector, and Tatiana Blum, Graduate School of Management, joined the discussion that raised a number of important issues and drew a road map for the committee’s further efforts.
• Jun 19, 2010 Briefing “The Customs Union. How Will It Work?”
  AmCham participated in a Forum event entitled “The Customs Union. How Will It Work?” The event was led by Andrey Slepnev (RF Deputy Minister of Economic Development), Zhanar Aitzhanova (Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Kazakhstan), and Vladimir Goshin (First Deputy Chairman, State Customs Committee of the Republic of Belarus)...
• Jun 18, 2010 Follow up to discussion on draft law amendments of the city tax incentive law (81-11)

  Further to the last Tax Committee meeting that reviewed the draft amendments to the Law of St. Petersburg No. 81-11 “On Tax Incentives” recently developed by the city government, we collected your comments and suggestions that were presented to Evgeny Elin, chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy & Trade, and Eduard Batanov, chairman of the Committee of Finance, at a special meeting earlier this week. During the meeting, all the participants decided to continue the work...

• Jun 18, 2010 CEO Breakfast with U.S. Under Secretary of State
  AmCham hosted a roundtable for senior executives and heads of companies with U.S. Under Secretary of State Robert D. Hormats.
• Jun 17, 2010 Russian-American CEO Roundtable
  AmCham and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs sponsored the Russian-American CEO Roundtable at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Andrew Somers, President and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, and Victor Vekselberg, Chairman of the Supervisory Committee, Renova Group, opened the business discussion after presentations by the Russian Minister of Economic Development Elvira Nabiullina, U.S. Under Secretary of State Robert D. Hormats, RF First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrey Denisov, and U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation John Beyrle...
• Jun 17, 2010 Round-Table “Customs Union: What, When & How?”
  Although July 1 — the starting date of the Customs Union — is approaching fast, there are still too many uncertainties due to the absence of relevant norms and regulations. To give AmCham members an opportunity to ask experts who are in charge of drafting those regulations, we organized a round-table featuring a special guest, Alexey E. LIKHACHEV, Director, Joint Dept. for Analysis and Regulation of External Economic Activities, RF Ministry of Economic Development, and his deputy Andrey Tochin...
• Jun 10, 2010 Tax Committee Meeting
  The meeting discussed the draft amendments to the city law on tax incentives prepared by the city government, and AmCham members’ questions and suggestions.
• Jun 09, 2010 Labor Migration Policies round-table

  The guest speakers — representatives of the Federal Migration Service’s St. Petersburg & Leningrad Oblast Directorate (UFMS SPb & LO) and Committees for Labor & Employment of both City and Oblast governments — discussed with AmCham members the most recent developments in the migration legislation.
  

• Jun 07, 2010 Call for Input: Monitoring Customs Situation
  Notwithstanding the successful efforts of Regional authorities with contribution from AmCham members on preventing further closure of remaining Customs Posts in the Northwest Russia, we are still receiving the information from member companies that the situation with customs clearance is not getting any better even after the introduction of Pushkinsky Customs Post...
• Jun 05, 2010 5th Soccer Tournament
  AmCham St. Petersburg’s 5th Soccer Tournament united 30 member companies’ teams who competed for AmCham Cup. In 2010, the tournament grew in terms of participating teams' professionalism and brought much surprise. Although the tournament has always been strictly non-professional, AmCham members had obviously been training hard for the tournament. The event gave every participant pure joy of fair competition that embraced teams of both large manufacturing enterprises and small white-collar offices. There was really no loser on the field, and we thank and congratulate all the teams...
• Jun 02, 2010 Soccer match between AmCham St. Pete and St. Pete Gov’t teams
  The traditional friendly match between the teams of AmCham St. Petersburg member companies’ top executives and St. Petersburg Government (the latter headed by Vice Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky) demonstrated significant advances our players had made, yet for the fifth time in a row failed to break the tradition of the government team’s winning the game.
• Jun 01, 2010 Joint IT & Tax Committees Meeting
  The joint meeting of the IT and Taxation Committees featured the topic of TAX INCENTIVES FOR IT...
• May 27, 2010 Executive Committee meeting
  At its May meeting, EC reviewed the regular AmCham St. Petersburg agenda and approved two new members’ applications — AMD’s for the Regular Corporate and Senator’s for the Affiliate Corporate membership.
• May 27, 2010 HR Committee meeting
  9 a.m.
  AmCham office
• May 25, 2010 Energy Efficiency Conference
  Economic aspects of implementation of energy saving systems were discussed by leading financial experts, researchers and specialists at a round-table organized by AmCham St. Petersburg within the framework of the Energy Efficiency Conference...
• May 24, 2010 Call for Input: Migration Law Changes Round-Table

  Further to the General Membership meeting on May 13 where FMS directorate head Oleg Artamonov announced very important amendments to the Russian migration legislation (see AmCham Russia’s Website for details) to come into force on July 1, the previously planned for late May ROUND-TABLE ON MIGRATION LEGISLATION is agreed with the UFMS to be moved to early June in order to make sure that every cutting-edge amendment is covered...

• May 20, 2010 Call for input: Customs Regulations
  Continuing AmCham St. Petersburg’s active work on customs issue, we present three important documents concerning the concept of the federal law on customs regulations kindly provided by the Customs & Transportation Committee co-chair Dmitry Mayorov (Ernst & Young) — please click on the header to see the documents.
  
  We appreciate your checking the documents and providing your input.
• May 17, 2010 Round-Table on Educational Cooperation
  On Monday, May 17, 2010, AmCham St. Petersburg held a round-table “Public-Private Partnership in Education: Building a System to Train Professionals in Demand through Efficient Trilateral Cooperation between Businesses, Universities and Government”. Most important issues of supplying the city economy with qualified workforce were discussed with St. Petersburg Vice Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky and Chairman of the Council of Rectors, Rector of St. Petersburg University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics Vladimir Vasiliev...
• May 13, 2010 General Membership meeting
  The General Membership Meeting featured two guest speakers. Oleg Artamonov, (Head, International & Public Affairs Directorate, Federal Migration Service) discussed recent changes to the migration legislation aimed at considerably simplifying the employment of highly-skilled expatriate professionals and expected to be signed by President Medvedev and to come into force on July 1. Mikhail Shmakov (Chairman, Russia’s Federation of Independent Trade Unions) discussed the key role of trade-union issues among foreign companies with operations in the St. Petersburg area.
• May 12, 2010 Call for questions - Labor migration policies
  Spring is the time when we hold our traditional Roundtable on Labor Migration Policies. AmCham will again host visitors from the Federal Migration Service Directorate for St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast as well as the Committee for Employment of St. Petersburg. In order to use this opportunity and collect as much information on the subject as possible, we announce this call for questions...
• Apr 30, 2010 Soccer Tournament — Apply!
  In June, we are planning to hold the 5th Mini-Soccer Tournament between AmCham member companies’ corporate amateur teams. If your company has a team, please apply no later than April 30...