Do Luzhkov and Baturina have children? Business success story of Elena Baturina: how a girl from a family of workers created a billion-dollar business
We have not heard about the life of the daughters of ex-Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and his wife Elena Baturina, who ranks 65th on the Forbes list with $1 billion one hundred million, for quite a long time. And so, the magazine found Olga Luzhkova, the youngest daughter of the former capital mayor, and found out how she lives now. It turned out he was busy. He studies and builds his own business - the Herbarium bar in the Austrian Alps at a hotel owned by his mother. We have selected several excerpts from the interview, which appears in the September issue of Tatler magazine.
The Baturin-Luzhkov family has chosen the Austrian Tyrol for a long time. As a child, young Olya learned to ski there. And in the town of Aurakh the family has a house. In general, it is almost impossible for foreigners to obtain permission to own real estate there, but Elena Baturina, the former owner of the Inteko company, managed to convince the community to make an exception for her. In principle, you don’t have to leave - the family also has a popular hotel and a golf club there. But Olga still considers Moscow her home - and not Austria, London or New York, where she is currently studying for a master's degree.
She is reserved about how Moscow is changing now, but remembers well how she had to hastily leave the capital in October 2010 after her father’s resignation as mayor:
"It was an ordinary day. I remember we went out with friends. Approaching the gate - we lived in a state dacha in the Universitet metro area - I saw many, many cars. Some strangers were sitting at home. And mom typed on her iPad: “We're leaving. Pack your things,” it was impossible to say out loud. It was clear that this would take a long time. The next day, my sister, mother and I flew away.” ... “Mom tried never to upset us with her emotions. But that day I saw her tears flowing. She heard a threat addressed to us. I couldn’t understand how you could put pressure by threatening children. We are the most precious thing to her.”
By the way, Olga Baturina, despite her mother’s solid condition, is not growing up to be a “lady”. In New York, she rents an apartment of 30 square meters, albeit in a prestigious area. But without gas - “tenants cook on stoves.” Now he is completing his master's degree and will be a specialist in hotel management. Olga has not changed much internally - before you could meet her at Zemfira’s concert and “Maxidrom”, now, apparently, she continues to love freedom more than the “golden cage”. And he dresses without “showing off”:
“It’s expensive to buy and expensive to maintain, because you have to dry clean these things all the time - it’s easier to buy a sweater at Zara.”
And she hasn’t yet earned enough money to buy expensive clothes. After all, she hasn’t been paid yet:
“The bar belongs to the hotel. As soon as he returns the investment and makes a profit, my mother will pay me compensation for what I did here.”
Olga also told about her mother and father - they are an example for her. It’s hard for her to imagine that she will be able to build the same relationship with someone:
“If we talk about their relationship with their mother, then I have not seen people with such an age difference who would understand each other so perfectly. I always wondered how at seventy-nine years old one could think and act so young. Dad still works a lot and plays sports. Yesterday I beat my mother at tennis. Oh, she’ll kill me if she reads it.”
The information onslaught on the family of Yuri Luzhkov did not lead to an answer to the traditional Russian question: Who is mrs. Baturina? The commercials shown on TV depicted an iron lady in front of us, with all the traditional activities for people of this kind: business, horse riding, private boarding houses and real estate far from the Motherland. There was even a doubt creeping in: does she carry out the physiological activity typical of our biological species, at least at the level of definition according to Ozhegov’s dictionary, which says that a person is “a living being with the gift of thinking and speech, the ability to create tools and use them in the process social labor".
Partly, all this is explained by Elena Nikolaevna’s closed nature. She never talked about her family, childhood, first love, girlish dreams - about everything that shapes a child and teenager into an adult, with his established habits and views on the surrounding living and non-living environment.
Free Press found a neighbor of the Baturin family, who lived with them in a residential building from the Frezer plant on Sormovskaya Street. Pensioner Maria Ivanovna Tyurina, in a monologue for SP, recalls what kind of family they were and how Elena Nikolaevna Baturina personally remembered her.
“We lived in the same building, I was on the 8th floor, and they were on the 6th. Parents Tamara Afanasyevna and Nikolai Egorovich were honest Soviet workers, and their children followed them. I was more friends with Tamara, she worked as a quality control inspector at Frazer, and through hard work and intelligence she got to this position. The family was non-drinking and friendly. We always said hello and went out into the yard on holidays. And we celebrated not only Soviet holidays together, but also Easter. On Trinity Sunday we went for birch branches.
They were native Muscovites. It seems like during the first famine (in 1921 - “SP”) their ancestors came here. Whether from Ryazan or Kazan, I can’t say for sure.
Lena also greeted me and my husband: “Uncle Lesha, hello! How is your health?" Nowadays no one asks like that, but before people were different and friendly.
Vitya, of course, like all the guys, was a jokester. And Lena is serious and businesslike. Even then she said that “I have no time to deal with nonsense.” Mom and dad's assistant is like that. She didn’t shy away from hard work. How many times have I seen him dragging potatoes, or knocking out the carpet in the yard in winter.
And already under Gorbachev, we millers were given plots of 6 acres. At that time, many people were afraid that now we would cultivate the land, and then, as under Stalin, it would be taken away again. It seems that the Baturins didn’t take the land then, which means that someone was dispossessed from them too, such things are not simply forgotten.
Tamara, of course, was worried when Lena got ready to marry Yura (Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov - “SP”), and said that he was no match for her. And he was much older than her. Lena already had a boyfriend then, he was so handsome, tall, a gymnast. Everyone thought that she would marry him, but fate turned out that way. I reassured Tamara and said that everything was in God’s hands. And in truth, Lena needed a literate person, not a gymnast, she herself graduated from the institute and became a secretary in the executive committee. And Yura didn’t drink or smoke. One day, one of our yard drunks asked him to smoke, so Yura told him for a long time that living the way he lived was not good, it dishonored not only himself, but the whole house. And Lena walked beautifully then, always neat. I hardly saw her myself then - the Baturins had already moved from us to a new house, like on Tashkent Street. But I won’t lie, maybe some other street, but I remember Tashkentskaya.
And then it turned out that Yura also turned out to be an honest person. When Lena’s dad, Nikolai Yegorovich, died, Luzhkov ordered their entrance to be repaired at the funeral. Would anyone try so hard in front of people now?
Nikolai Egorovich, of course, worried about his native Frazer plant until the last moment. He was devastated by the fact that his machine was sold for scrap metal.
The Frazer plant still stands, but there are no workers there, only businessmen - they store something, transport it here and there, and even sometimes at night, when people are supposed to sleep. It's a shame for the plant. We would like Elena Nikolaevna to buy Fraser and make everything there the way it was before. So that people can have a meaningful work life again. So that people don’t wander around the courtyards uselessly and don’t cause mischief.
This year my grandson graduated from the same institute as Lena (Academy of Public Administration - “SP”). I wrote her a letter asking if it was possible to take my grandson to Inteko, but I never received an answer.
In general, we millers are very proud of Elena Nikolaevna Baturina, that she, like us, rose from a working-class family to become the most famous people in Russia. She understands the simple life."
The day before, a rumor spread across the media: they say that the daughters of ex-Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, 16-year-old Olya and 18-year-old Lena, exchanged Moscow State University for the University of London. They even allegedly started the new school year in England...
The journalists got excited. After all, before this, let us remind you, there was another rumor. It was rumored that Yuri Mikhailovich himself and his wife Elena Baturina were packing their things before moving to the homeland of the British Queen. Has the Luzhkov family really decided to change their place of residence?
Komsomolskaya Pravda went to Moscow State University, where both daughters of the former Moscow mayor began their studies on September 1.
Lena Baturina on her VKontakte page in different images
Olya was taken to study by bodyguards
16-year-old Olya, who graduated from school as an external student, entered the Faculty of Economics at Moscow State University this year. Students of this age are not uncommon at the faculty; here you can also meet 14-year-old freshmen.
“When they found Olga Luzhkova on the list of applicants, they laughed that the name was loud, and then it turned out that she was really the mayor’s daughter,” an economics student named Suren told KP. “Several times I saw that her bodyguards brought her right to the doors of the faculty. However, they were not allowed inside.
“This year we saw Olya in September, at the initiation into students,” second-year student Oksana confirmed to the KP correspondent.
“After this celebration, I crossed paths with her several times in the corridors and on the stairs. The guys say that at lectures, where several groups usually sat, Luzhkova was seen quite often. She didn’t stay away from the rest of the students, but she didn’t get particularly close to anyone either.
“The last time I saw her at the university was September 26, the day when Yuri Luzhkov was removed from his post,” says 19-year-old student Natalya.
Lena Baturina - about herself on VKontakte: “I love, as my mother says, to lead a vulgar lifestyle”
Classmates say that after her father’s resignation, Olga did not show up to study, and two weeks ago rumors spread around the faculty that she had withdrawn her documents from the university in connection with a transfer to one of the universities in either Switzerland or Austria. Olya Luzhkova’s former classmates have not heard anything about the English “option” that the media is trumpeting about. However, in the academic department of the Faculty of Economics, the fact that student Olga Baturina was transferred to another university was not confirmed to us:
“We answer such questions only after official requests, but we cannot say how long the consideration will last, and whether we will answer in the end,” a faculty member who refused to introduce himself told us. - Still, whether this or that student studies with us or not, this may be his private secret.
Fascinated by emo culture, Luzhkov's daughter dyed her hair pink
Elena Baturina - emo
And here’s what classmates say about Elena Baturina (the ex-mayor’s eldest daughter was enrolled at the university under her mother’s name), who completed two courses at the Faculty of Public Administration, and this summer transferred to the Faculty of World Politics. She was never seen under the supervision of bodyguards: she came to the university alone and did not particularly boast of her position.
An interesting detail: 18-year-old Lena is interested in fashionable youth movements like emo and punk, dyes her hair pink and black, and prefers an informal style in clothes. There is a story going around Moscow State University that one of the guys from her class once came to a concert of a popular youth rock band and unexpectedly met Lena Baturina among the “partying” crowd. The ex-mayor’s daughter’s democratic attitude was perceived ambiguously among students: some thought it was a “pass”, while others thought that the girl was “crazy.”
Peers - about Lena Baturina: “Really an ordinary girl!”
- Actually an ordinary girl! - says Mikhail, a student at the Faculty of World Politics. - No different from others.
At school Lena wore red hair
It is also known that the eldest daughter of Yuri Luzhkov did not succeed in her studies. Several times she failed to pass the exams the first time.
“As far as I know, the last session was difficult for her, that’s why she transferred to world politics,” said one of Lena’s now former classmates.
Official representatives of Moscow State University denied rumors about the transfer of daughters to another university. The press service of the Inteko company, owned by the students’ mother Elena Baturina, also did not confirm this information. They also reported that Elena Baturina herself also does not leave for England, but continues to work in Moscow.
However, you can learn about the personal lives of Olya and Lena first-hand. The sisters are quite active in unsubscribing on their pages on the VKontakte website. True, for the sake of secrecy, they slightly changed the surnames - so that uninvited guests would not come. By the way, Olya’s page is closed to outsiders, but Lena fearlessly posts photos here.
Verbatim
Lena loves to “crush loaves and trim fountains”
Sociable Lena is not shy about looking funny
Activity: Lazy image overgrown with moss (:
Interests: Chop loaves of bread, trim fountains, vacuum the desert, saw down doors
Favorite music: Punk, Alternative, Reggae, Hardcore, Trance, Drum And Bass, House, Rock, Jazz, etc.
Favorite films: Pirates of the Caribbean, 1,000,000 BC, Requiem for a Dream, Euro Tour, 5th Element, Night of the Living Morons, Silent Hill, The Hills Have Eyes, Saw, 99 Francs, Cargo 200, etc.
Favorite TV Shows: Lost, Scrubs, FlashForward, etc.
Favorite books: Victor Pelevin, Bernard Werber, Ryu Murakami, Erlend Lu, Frederick Beigbeder, Jerome Salinger, Chuck Palahniuk, Roger Zelazny, Dmitry Glukhovsky, Mikhail Bulgakov, Dmitry Lipskerov, Melvin Burgess, Paulo Coelho and others.
Favorite games: Gothic 3, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, The Sims, etc.
Favorite quotes: “All people look the same”
About Me: I love, as my mother says, to lead a vulgar lifestyle (:
Career:
place of work: cafe "Dirigible", Moscow, 2007-2007
Promoter
place of work: JSC "Inteko" Moscow, 2007-2007
For small orders
place of work: magazine "IndiGO" Simferopol, since 2009
Journalist
Clubs:"Point", "B1 Maximum".
Culture: Paleontological Museum, Moscow.*
In 1989, former factory worker and junior researcher Elena Baturina began a long and difficult path to the top of business. In 1991, the Inteko company appeared, engaged in the production of household items made of plastic. In 2002, the main activity was supplemented by the construction of buildings on the basis of house-building plant No. 3, which was gradually supplemented by cement factories and its own bank. Since 2011, the entrepreneur has been moving her business abroad, where she continues her development activities. In 2016, Forbes listed her as the richest woman in Russia with a net worth of $1.1 billion.
It is believed that big business is a sphere of fierce competition and harsh natural selection, the lot of men. Sometimes ladies show themselves in it no worse than the stronger half of humanity.
The story of Elena Baturina's business creation is a vivid example of how a woman, a mother of two daughters, a caring wife, managed to take on the difficult burden of a business, make it profitable and achieve unconditional success.
Elena Nikolaevna Baturina- entrepreneur, founder of the Inteko corporation, the only female billionaire in Russia, whose fortune, according to Forbes, was estimated at $1.1 billion in 2016, wife of the former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov. Her story is striking in that she managed to achieve success in completely “non-female” industries - industrial production and construction.
“It’s very good that I’m a woman. A woman will always find something to do.”
The results of Baturina’s work on the stock market are also indicative: she has always effectively formed and rebuilt her investment portfolio, supplementing it with assets of “blue chips” - Sberbank of Russia, Gazprom, etc.
A separate page in the biography of Elena Baturina is the numerous lawsuits she won (the total amount of compensation is estimated at 1-3 million rubles), mainly related to challenging false information disseminated by the media.
“It seems to me that the poor people steal and take, those who cannot earn money. I don’t consider myself one of those people.”
Being the daughter of ordinary workers, forced to go to work at a factory immediately after graduating from school, Elena Baturina managed to overcome the chasm and top the list of the richest women in Russia.
In 1989, she began her journey in business as part of a cooperative created together with her brother Victor. Two years later, her main brainchild appeared - the Inteko company, which became not only a key milestone in Baturina’s business, but also a part of Russian history. After all, it was she who created a number of large construction projects in Moscow: the Shuvalovsky and Grand Park residential areas, the Volzhsky microdistrict, the Fusion complex and the academic building of Moscow State University.
The personality of Elena Baturina is surrounded by numerous scandalous rumors. But one thing is certain: this woman managed to achieve success in business, and she continues to implement successful projects.
“I know that if I had allowed myself any illegal actions during more than 20 years of doing business, I would have killed myself. And I’m glad that my conscience is clear, because this allows me today to look everyone in the eye completely openly.”
In 2010, the entrepreneur was first included in the Forbes magazine rating with a fortune of $2.9 billion, and in 2011 she took 77th place in the list of successful Russian businessmen.
In 2012, Elena completely ceased her entrepreneurial activities in Russia and launched a development business in Europe. In 2013, she was ranked 12th among the wealthiest people in the UK, where she moved to be close to her daughters.
In 2017, her fortune, according to Forbes, amounted to $1 billion, a decrease of $100 million compared to the previous year. This allowed her to take 90th place in the authoritative ranking.
To this day, she continues to be the richest woman in Russia. Throughout her entire period of entrepreneurial activity, Baturina has been a well-known philanthropist and philanthropist, who has donated about $300 million to charitable purposes. In 2012, she created the BE OPEN charitable foundation.
How did it happen that a girl from a working-class family became the creator of the Inteko business empire? How did she manage to move from producing plastic basins and glasses to creating large-scale construction projects, maintaining her fortune and reputation even after leaving Russia? The secrets of the Russian businesswoman's success lie in the history of the creation of her life's work.
A girl from a working family
On the eve of International Women's Day - March 8, 1963, a daughter, Elena, was born into a family of workers at the Moscow Frazer plant. She became the second child and the long-awaited girl. During her childhood, the baby was in poor health. None of those close to me could have imagined that the fragile Lenochka would turn into a strict, assertive, purposeful and sometimes extremely tough entrepreneur.
The family did not live well, which is why Elena had to enter the factory at the age of 17. After finishing her day shift, the girl hurried to her evening classes at the institute. This challenging schedule laid the foundations for a strong character.
After graduation, she was invited to work at a research institute. In an effort to build a career, Baturina agreed.
Reference: Elena's work at the Moscow Institute of Economic Problems was successful: she quickly became a research fellow, and later the head of the secretariat. Subsequently, she was called to the commission of the Moscow City Executive Committee to the position of chief specialist, where she first met her future husband, Yuri Luzhkov.
Source: Forbes
However, the monotonous work in government agencies seemed boring and divorced from reality to Elena Baturina. There was only one solution - to go into business.
First steps and birth of Inteko
In 1989, a cooperative for the sale and installation of software was registered in the name of Elena Baturina. The co-founder was her older brother Victor. However, the lack of sufficient start-up capital and knowledge of how to start a business prevented the business from gaining momentum.
But Elena was not going to give up. In 1991, she created Inteko LLP, which became known as a manufacturer of plastic products - dishes, household items, chairs, etc. The decision turned out to be successful, since this was a relatively new field of activity for Russia.
“Russia is not Europe, where all niches have long been occupied. 18 years ago, our nascent market had an almost empty field; we just had to choose the right direction in which to move. We decided to go into production.”
In 1994, the company, using mainly borrowed capital (approximately 6 million rubles), acquired a plastics processing plant. Thanks to the victory in 1998 in the tender for the supply of 80 thousand plastic seats for the construction of the Luzhniki stadium, the company managed to repay the loan.
Elena Baturina's company managed not only to survive the default of 1998, but even to reorganize into a closed joint stock company and significantly gain a foothold in the Russian market. In the early 2000s, it accounted for:
- 1/4 of the production of all plastic products in the country;
- 15-20% of the plastics market.
Moreover, since 1999, the Inteko company begins to follow a diversification strategy: along with plastic products, it moves to the production of modern finishing materials (for panel and monolithic construction), and practices architectural design and real estate business.
Development of the construction industry
Elena Baturina did not stop there. Until the early 2000s, she had her sights set on the construction industry. However, the lack of impressive free capital and concerns about high risks hampered.
Chance helped her break into the industry. In 2001, the lawyer of the widow of the director of the Moscow house-building plant No. 3 came to the entrepreneur. Frightened by the threats of competitors, the woman offered Inteko to buy a stake from her (52%). Elena realized that this was an opportunity and agreed to the deal.
In the period from 2002 to 2005. the new enterprise built an average of 500 thousand square meters of housing per year.
Interesting fact: During the heyday of the construction business, Baturina’s daughters, Elena (2002) and Olga (2004), were born.
Baturina realized that further expansion and diversification of Inteko could bring her serious results. And, without neglecting the possibility of using borrowed capital, she continued her journey in the ocean of business.
“To succeed, a woman needs to be head and shoulders above her partners and competitors”
In subsequent years, the Inteko group of companies is continually replenished with new members:
- 2002 - separation of the construction company Strategi LLC, which specializes in the construction of monolithic buildings, within Inteko;
- 2003 - acquisition of two cement plants;
- 2004 - purchase of shares in four enterprises producing construction materials;
- 2005 - purchase of assets of the Russian Land Bank (RZB) mainly for the purpose of ensuring financial transactions for the main business.
The active growth of Baturina’s business allowed her to engage in the construction of elite buildings and standard houses. The design bureau, which operated as part of Inteko from the first years of its activity, created sketches of apartments with improved layouts and worked out the design of facades in detail.
Economies of scale and a balanced approach to business are the main criteria for Baturina’s victories in public and private tenders.
There is an opinion that many orders went to her thanks to the high position of her husband. However, it is worth paying attention to the fact that all the tasks assigned to Inteko were completed efficiently and on time. Here we were talking about the personal qualities of the entrepreneur, and not about her influential husband.
“It’s all about genes - a person is either a leader by nature or not. I have always been a leader"
In 2005, Elena Baturina decides to concentrate her efforts on the construction of monolithic housing and commercial real estate: this area brought the greatest profit to Inteko. As a result, it sells DMK No. 3 and all cement plants and invests most of the proceeds in its core activities.
At the same time, the original direction of Inteko’s functioning was not forgotten: the corporation provided plastic utensils to the majority of bistros in Moscow and the Moscow region.
She used the remaining amount to purchase securities of Russia's largest corporations (mainly shares of Sberbank and Gazprom). This step was regarded by many analysts as very far-sighted: it was it that helped Inteko stay afloat in 2008-2009, when the entrepreneur sold part of the highly profitable shares and covered the burning bank loans.
“I don’t think I made a great career because all my life I dreamed of being an analyst. Someone should sit as an eminence grise and write analytical materials.”
The daughter of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and the richest woman in Russia, Elena Baturina, Elena Luzhkova, received Cypriot citizenship. This follows from the data of the British register of legal entities. Previously, a series of publications showed that many wealthy Russians have island passports (Cyprus and Malta). For example, billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Yandex founder Arkady Volozh. These are “golden visas”, which make it easier to travel around the world.
Elena Luzhkova is 25 years old. She lives in the UK. The girl graduated from the University of London, majoring in politics of Eastern European countries. Like Yuri Luzhkov recently, now his daughter Elena works in London “in one of the structures associated with the hotel business.”
Elena is also trying to do business on her own. In 2016, she registered the company Whip Limited. Profile - “other types of business support activities not included in any categories” (registry data). And previously Elena had another company - Claredron education (its profile was no more clear).
The cards of both companies indicate that Elena has Cypriot citizenship.
I no longer have the Whip company, I recently closed it,” Elena Luzhkova told Life. - She doesn’t plan to do anything, I registered her so that no one would steal her name, but this is no longer relevant to me. The Clarendon Company also did nothing and also registered in order to have the right to use the name. Yes, it is also closed. Regarding business in the future: I don’t want to talk about something ahead of time, so that if it doesn’t work out, then I won’t have to report on it later.
In a conversation with Life, the girl did not deny that she has a Cypriot passport. Confirm and tell details too.
Regarding the passport, I’m afraid I can’t answer you anything, it’s personal,” she said.
Elena noted that she goes to Russia on vacation, but spends most of her time in the UK because she works there.
In order to obtain a Cypriot passport, a foreign citizen must invest at least €2 million in real estate in the country or €2.5 million in Cypriot companies or government bonds.
At the same time, you don’t need to give up your home country - but you can travel around the world, obtaining visas more easily. This is why this program is called the “golden visa”.
Elena Baturina’s structures invest much more money in Cyprus real estate than is needed to obtain citizenship. How, in the summer of 2018, she will begin building a residential complex in Limassol (a city in the south of Cyprus). The investment will amount to €40 million. By the way, Baturina herself is listed in the British register of legal entities as a Russian citizen.
citizenship in exchange for investment."
In January 2018, RBC reported that hundreds of wealthy Russians received Maltese citizenship. Among them are the founder and co-owner of Yandex Arkady Volozh and members of his family, the owner of the investment and development company O1 Properties Boris Mints and members of his family.
By the way, Elena Luzhkova’s younger sister, Olga, also lives abroad. She opened and manages the Herbarium bar near Baturina's Grand Tirolia hotel in Kitzbühel, Switzerland.
He himself spends a lot of time on his farm near Kaliningrad, where he grows buckwheat, wheat, barley and breeds horses and sheep.