By Andrei Skvarsky.
Sberbank is buying a 5% stake in construction company Inteco from Yelena Baturina, the wife of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov.
Binbank co-owner Mikhail Shishkhanov is buying the rest of the construction firm, which is wholly owned by Baturina and has its market value put at $1.2bn.
Inteco’s sale to Shishkhanov and Sberbank Investments, a subsidiary of Russia’s biggest lender, is to be closed within a month, Sberbank said in a statement.
Sberbank Investments sees the deal “as part of its investment strategy of buying assets with a stable growth outlook”, said the subsidiary’s chief executive, Andrei Datsenko.
Sberbank, to which Inteco owes 14bn rubles ($475m), has been trying hard to move into investment banking over the past year. It is currently buying out Russian brokerage Troika Dialog as a strategic part of the plan.
Baturina’s business empire has been deep in trouble after Luzhkov’s sensational sacking by President Dmitry Medvedev a year ago.
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