Verny Capital, the Kazakh private equity firm whose lead investor is billionaire Bulat Utemuratov, has bought Moscow's Ritz-Carlton Hotel, ahead of a $3.2bn payout from the Glencore IPO.
"The Ritz-Carlton acquisition price is about $600m," Timur Issatayev, chief executive of Verny Investment Holdings, confirmed to The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.
Bulat Utermuratov, a close aide of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, was shot into the Forbes billionaire's list when he sold ATF, a Kazakh Bank, to Italy's Unicredit in 2008.
The $2.3bn proceeds were channelled into Verny Capital, which is managed by Mr Issatayev, ATF's former chairman.
Verny Capital will receive a $3.2bn payout later this year when Glencore, the Swiss commodities giant, uses 40pc of the proceeds of this month's IPO to buy a 42.3pc stake it holds in Kazzinc, a mining company.
Verny Capital completed the acquisition from Capital Partners, a Kazakh property development group, last month.
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The hotel is built on the site of the former Soviet Intourist hotel, giving it an enviable location bordering Red Square on Tverskaya Street, the Moscow equivalent of Paris's Champs-Élysées.
Capital Partners is thought to have been forced to sell to avoid a default on the debt used to fund the construction.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday Mr Issatayev said Verny Capital believed property in Moscow was attractively valued compared with what was available in Kazakhstan, where property owners have yet to adjust their price expectations almost three years after the financial crisis.
www.telegraph.co.uk
