Arkady Rotenberg is conducting an asset audit
Since the US and EU imposed sanctions against Arkady Rotenberg, he has withdrawn from at least two development companies.
Businessman Arkady Rotenberg is no longer a partner of Alexander Ponomarenko and Alexander Skorobogatko, the former owners of the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port, in their development business, TPS Real Estate, a source close to its management told Vedomosti. A representative for Rotenberg confirmed that the businessman has left TPS Real Estate co-ownership but declined to disclose details of the transaction. A representative for TPS Real Estate itself clarified that Rotenberg has not been a beneficiary of TPS Real Estate Holding, which owns 100% of the development company, since July 2014.
TPS Real Estate specializes in the construction and management of shopping centers. The company's portfolio currently comprises approximately 1 million square meters of real estate, including the operating shopping and entertainment centers Galereya Krasnodar in Krasnodar, Moremall in Sochi, and Ocean Plaza in Kyiv, according to its website. Three more projects are under construction: Galereya Novosibirsk (scheduled to open by the end of this year) and shopping centers near the Slavyansky Bulvar and Polezhaevskaya metro stations in Moscow. Earlier this year, TPS Real Estate announced its commitment to invest approximately $3 billion in shopping center construction by 2017.
Vedomosti's sources did not disclose the reasons for Rotenberg's exit as a co-owner or the buyers of his stake. The sale of the stake is most likely related to the sanctions imposed by the US and the EU against the businessman, according to Konstantin Kovalev, managing partner of Blackwood, a real estate consulting and sales agency. TPS Real Estate has ambitious plans and needs to attract loans, and with such a co-owner, this is becoming difficult.
The US and the EU added Arkady Rotenberg to their sanctions list this spring. In its 2013 annual report, TPS Real Estate suggested that sanctions could hinder access for "Russian businesses to international capital markets and export markets," cause capital flight, weaken the ruble, and so on. The report makes no assumptions about how the sanctions will affect the company's operations.
At the end of September, Italy's financial police seized Rotenberg's assets in the country, valued at approximately €30 million, including apartments and a villa in Cagliari, a villa in Tarquinia, two villas in Arzachena, and the Berg Luxury Hotel in central Rome.
Rotenberg's stake in TPS Real Estate is unknown. In 2012, Ponomarenko told Forbes magazine that each of the three co-owners invested $500 million in the company's authorized capital; likely, each of them owned approximately 33%.
Currently, 100% of the company's assets could be worth more than $1,7 billion—that's Kovalev's rough estimate.
Rotenberg also had other development assets: for example, he was the principal owner of RG-Development, a company planning to develop commercial and residential real estate projects. However, the company has yet to announce any projects. RG-Development has several owners, and Arkady Rotenberg is not among them, says company spokesperson Natalya Ivanova.
Rotenberg also owned a stake in the Moskva Hotel and invested in the construction of the large Aviapark shopping center (400,000 square meters) on Khodynka Field. It was not possible to determine yesterday whether he still holds shares in these assets.
In addition, Arkady Rotenberg controls Stroygazmontazh, and, together with his brother Boris, controls SMP Bank and the Northern European Pipe Project (SETP, a pipe supplier to Gazprom), while, together with his son Igor, he controls Mostotrest. SMP Bank remains under the Rotenbergs' control, according to its representative. A representative for Mostotrest declined to comment, and Stroygazmontazh could not be reached. SETP, meanwhile, has been preparing for closure since the spring of 2014.
Anton Filatov, Milana Chelpanova, Ведомости
Subscribe to our channels in Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, VC — Only new faces from the section CRYPT!