Russia’s richest woman, Yelena Baturina, has sold Inteko, one of the country’s biggest development and investment companies, together with its associate company Patriot and other holdings, to a Moscow banker and a Sberbank subsidiary company.
Binbank’s president Mikail Shishkhanov, who bought the main stake, said the assets would help him implement some ambitious development projects in Moscow’s newly announced future territories. The total market value of Inteko and its associate companies and projects was put at $1.2 billion, according to an official statement on Inteko’s website. The total value of the transaction has not been revealed.
One year on
The deal was signed nearly one year after Baturina’s husband, ex-mayor Yury Luzhkov, was dismissed from City Hall and the construction empire found itself in serious. Last summer, just a few months before Luzhkov’s sacking, Baturina was named the world’s third richest woman by Forbes magazine.
Sberbank was among Inteko’s lenders, and the total amount of debts the company had by the end of 2010 was about $1 billion, Vedomosti wrote, citing data from marker.ru.
Another loan was provided by Bank of Moscow, which also got into trouble after Luzhkov left the Mayor’s Office — those credits were later investigated by police.
State-run bank VTB has since bought the Bank of Moscow and filed a lawsuit against the troubled development company.
Future plans
Rumors over the Inteko sell-off have been circulating for a while, and the dethroned business queen has started shedding her other assets. Baturina said, however, that she is not leaving the business world completely and is going to create more real estate projects in Russia and abroad. She added that the “adequate market offer” that she received is to provide her with additional funds for new development and investment projects. “I will definitely inform the media on the progress of potential social and business project in the near future,” Baturina said.
The purchase is “a part of the [Sberbank Investitsii’s] investment strategy,” Andrei Datsenko, director general at Sberbank Investitsii, said adding that the company has “strong prospects for growth.”
Sberbank Investitsii purchased a modest 5 percent stake in Inteko and Patriot, an associate company created for regional and international residential development projects. BIN Bank’s Shishkhanov used his own funds to purchase his 95 percent stake, according to the statement.
The purchase is to be completed by the end of the month, and Shishkhanov promised that all projects that had already commenced would be completed and that all financial obligations would be fulfilled.