Russia’s Richest Woman Yelena Baturina Launches Development Business in New York

LONDON, February 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Yelena Baturina, the international entrepreneur and philanthropist, has launched a development business in New York thus expanding her international business portfolio. In 2015 Baturina's structures opened a representative office in the United States, whose purpose was to oversee the investments in the country, and provide operational management for her first project in New York.

Yelena Baturina's first development project in the United States is located in central Brooklyn, the most promising and fastest growing area of New York. Brooklyn is the third largest business centre of the city after Lower and Midtown Manhattan. Due to its proximity to the city centre, good transport links and large municipal investment into the improvement of the area, the residential and commercial real estate market in central Brooklyn is growing rapidly - thus, the market prices for residential are growing at 5-6% per year, while 90% of the apartments are in rent.

Baturina's company has acquired the first set of commercial buildings next to Barclay's Centre, a very popular sports and entertainment venue. The company owns the buildings with a total area of 1,500 square meters, and the investment that went into their acquisition totaled US $10 million.

Currently the buildings are for commercial use, but the company is considering transfering the land they are located on to a category suitable for residential construction, so that a large-scale development project could be realised here.

Another line of Baturina's business in the US is investing into real estate development funds.

On her business activities in the US, Yelena Baturina said: "We've managed to make a number of investments at a very good moment - in the situation when the market dropped after 2008. Today the market has without a doubt fully recovered, and the forecast for the future is very good - the rental sector is particularly stable. In this regard, we plan to expand our operations, and are considering the acquisition of a number of similar projects."

After selling her main Russian asset, a construction holding 'Inteco' in 2011, and transferring most of her business operations to Europe, Yelena Baturina has been successfully developing a number of various commercial projects in the West: the hotel business (a network of 4 hotels in Ireland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Russia), the production and sale of renewable energy (Italy), the membrane construction enterprise (Germany), and a variety of real estate investment funds.