RAO "UES" was sold

An oil house on Vernadsky Avenue is being bought by a certain company "Intercession"

RAO UES of Russia has decided on the buyer of its building - a 23-story business center with a total area of ​​47.5 thousand square meters. m with parking for 400 spaces next to the Prospekt Vernadskogo metro station. This building is also known as the Oil House - in 1995 it was built with funds from Siberian oil companies. As Margarita Nagoga, head of the energy holding's media relations department, told Vremya Novostey, the broker company Intercession offered the best price and financial guarantee. The amount of the transaction, which the board of directors of RAO must approve the day after tomorrow, is 4.288 billion rubles, or $176 million, the starting price was approved at $165 million. RAO did not say in whose interests the buyer is acting. Previously, various sources said that Gazprom and Don-Stroy were showing interest in the building. Representatives of these structures did not comment on the situation yesterday.

RAO did not live in the Oil House for long - it acquired 75% of its owner's shares for $30 million in 2002. The building looked unsightly at that time: the oil companies that founded it considered it undignified to be so far from the center, and therefore did not invest in modernization. But RAO made quite serious repairs and installed a large communications system. In addition, it bought out the shares of minority shareholders of the Oil House and became almost its sole owner.

But when an announcement about the sale of the business center appeared last spring, commercial real estate market experts estimated it at $180-210 million. This was a conservative estimate, since the building is old and the parking is small and inconvenient. However, KPMG valued the Oil House at RUB 3.201 billion. ($131 million), and Cushman & Wakefield - 3.479 billion rubles. ($180 million). The set starting price was approximately in the middle of this range.

According to Ms. Nagoga, RAO consultants advised holding not an auction, but an open tender, which was eventually done. True, it was delayed, since RAO last year increased its share in the company that owns the building and separated the business center into a separate legal entity. At the end of December, the results of the tender were summed up. RAO says that there were several contenders, but they refuse to name them. Ms. Nagoga only emphasizes that Intercession does not act in the interests of companies that have spun off from RAO. In addition, she indicated, the buyer undertakes not to evict RAO employees until the end of this year (the energy holding will be liquidated by July 1, but it may take another three to four months to complete procedural issues, deputy chairman of the board Yakov Urinson said earlier).

Nikolay GORELOV