A fragile woman and the head of a large welding and installation company celebrates her anniversary. Belyaeva Valentina Yakovlevna General Director of OJSC Welding and Assembly Trust Trust in itself

On the last day of the outgoing year, Valentina Yakovlevna Belyaeva, director of the Welding and Assembly Trust OJSC, celebrates her "round" birthday - a living legend among her colleagues and a symbol of the entire industry.

More than half a century in service

Dear Valentina Yakovlevna!
On the day of your anniversary, we, your employees and students, are pleased to recall the years, who and decades, of joint friendly work under your leadership in the difficult field of building oil and gas pipelines. It was a time of impressive labor achievements, which the whole country was talking about.

You have devoted your whole life to strengthening the economy of the Motherland, serving the people, inscribing new bright lines in the history of the country. You never strive to follow the beaten path, preferring your own path, which always leads you to success. And we are proud to be with you.

Over the decades of your work, you have shown the outstanding qualities of a talented leader, a decisive reformer, a brilliant economist, the ability to capture the whole picture, identify the most acute problems in it, and offer unexpected solutions. You always just gush with ideas, radiate irrepressible energy, demonstrating fantastic performance and unwillingness to back down and give up.

How compressed time is, how tightly - link to link - the successes of the team of the Welding and Assembly Trust, which you successfully head, are soldered into a single chain! Your multifaceted activity has reaffirmed the old truth: "His Majesty Success always accompanies those who stubbornly move towards Her Majesty the Goal."

Health to you and further work for the good of our Motherland!

E.A. Serikov, Deputy General Director of OAO SMT, S.I. Kuznetsov, head of the Ipatovo WUA section and the entire staff of the Welding and Assembly Trust.

What if you were born a fragile woman, but a leader by nature? And what if your life position does not allow you to remain in the shadows? Valentina Yakovlevna 50 years ago simply solved this issue. She got a job at the Welding and Assembly Trust and stayed here forever. A brilliant, solid career, woven from numerous labor victories and successes on a national scale, was crowned in 2000 by the election to the position of General Director of the oldest, one of the country's largest enterprises for laying main pipelines.

Pipeline construction is a complex and at the same time amazing industry, in which mathematical precision and creativity, high technical level of knowledge and inspiration, technology and huge human potential are magically intertwined. The builders of the main pipelines are one of the most skillful detachments of the army of builders. Like no other structures, the threads of the main transport systems have always been an indicator of the level of development of the national economy.

Valentina Yakovlevna has all the qualities of a leader of just such a team. In her character, the facets of the talent of an administrator and a professional, a person with a rare charm and adamant in achieving her goal, are highlighted. She managed to implant all her personal qualities into the fabric of her favorite work, to which she gives herself without a trace for more than half a century.

Always first!

Not everyone gets to be first. It is necessary to have an indomitable character, a high temper. Just like Valentina Yakovlevna Belyaeva. It is no coincidence that it entered the history of the development of the oil and gas complex as an active participant in several major projects that have become milestones in the development of the economy of the country and its regions.

In the early 80s, Valentina Yakovlevna was appointed one of the leaders in the construction of the transcontinental gas pipeline Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod. This grandiose megaproject was considered one of the most important even in the USSR, a country with a powerful economy. Belyaeva brilliantly coped with problems of any complexity, and there were many of them on the track. And even managed to think over, substantiate and prove a fundamentally new method of construction. Her proposals were innovative and broke stereotypes that had been established for decades, which seemed unshakable even among venerable professionals.

Today, the flow-dissected method proposed by her seems to be a “classic of the genre”, and thirty years ago it became a major step forward in the practice of oil and gas construction, and thanks to its application in the industry, labor productivity has significantly increased. Suffice it to say that gas builders began laying 1 kilometer of finished pipes(or 20 km per month), significantly accelerating the pace of work. This fact is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. And the government awarded the famous innovator with the Golden Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor. And there are many such facts in her biography.

Bright Leader

More than half a century of activity of Valentina Yakovlevna from the first day to the last is illuminated by the high meaning of serving her homeland, her people. The daily circle of her worries is truly the circle of life. She draws reserves of her own spirit in communication with her colleagues, and of any rank, who see in her a person who is always ready to help in word and deed. Her calmness and confidence create a zone of attraction that people always guess correctly. A leader always radiates powerful energy, which, in turn, gives rise to energy in the people around him. Especially if this leader is a Woman.

Belyaeva is characterized by a large-scale vision of the problems of the development of the industry, constant search and high professionalism in the implementation practical tasks preparation for the next project. Oil and gas construction workers are a nomadic profession. It is important not only to fulfill the next order within the stipulated time, but also to confirm the high standard of the team's image. And here I must say about one more character trait of the CEO - her constant concern for people. Wherever the next construction begins, the work starts with the arrangement of life and recreation, the creation of residential towns. Valentina Yakovlevna personally checks the readiness of these objects. For example, she tastes food and helps young cooks with advice, and, if necessary, she stands at the stove herself, preparing food for several hundred hungry men.

The Chinese proverb says: "Graceful words are not true, truthful words are inelegant." Valentina Yakovlevna can always find the right words, understandable to everyone present. She knows how to sincerely and confidentially talk with employees, after the conversation they seem to grow wings. By nature, constantly charged with energy, able to look at problems through a magnifying glass, possessing a rare ability to bring things to a victorious end, she is both wise and passionate at the same time in her favorite business. She never tries to look “white and fluffy”, does not give up her positions and principles. Always and with everyone consistently upholds the letter and spirit of laws, state interests. The search for truth is more important for her than any conditional barriers. Therefore, she is called the first everywhere, no matter what she undertakes. The best leader and specialist, best mother and grandmother, the best cook and the soul of the company, at the same time does not make indulgences either to herself or to those around her. Because the main thing in life for her is the Business.

Fate issued a long-distance ticket for the activities of Valentina Yakovlevna. And today the trust team performs important tasks, they are set by the key partner of the trust, OAO Gazprom. The trust headed by its illustrious leader is a direct participant in the implementation of the largest oil and gas projects of recent years: Yamal-Europe, North-European, Tengiz-Novorossiysk, Yaroslavl-Kirishi, Sakhalin-2 and many others. The projects are of major national importance and are designed to strengthen the country's economy. This is the whole point of her life.

According to the SPARK-Interfax database and lists of affiliated persons, 22.9% of SMT shares are owned by Chairman of the Board of Directors Alexei Mikhailichenko, 20% by Valentina Belyaeva, the same amount by her son Sergei, executive director trust. Another 20% is held by the Deputy General Director for Economics Lyudmila Nevler, 11% by the Head of the Production and Technical Department Lyudmila Kapralenko, 0.24% by the Deputy General Director for Procurement Sergey Nazarov (the remaining 6% are controlled, according to Belyaeva, by almost 180 shareholders ).

All the current owners have been working in the trust for most of their lives and know each other just as much. The average age of CMT board members is 73.6 years, top managers are over 60 years old. The transformation of the state trust into a private company has changed almost nothing for them, Belyaeva admits: “We just continue to work as before. I never even think about the fact that we are some kind of separate shareholders.” More than 20 dynasties work in SMT, and the main office of the company does not at all look like a faceless administrative building - it rather resembles an apartment where photographs from objects, thanks and diplomas are hung on the walls. All issues in the trust are still solved jointly: they train new personnel, help with housing, there is even a small Pension Fund Belyaeva says. “Old workers appreciate all this and do not leave, but young people do not take root very well: difficult conditions,” she adds bitterly.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of SMT Alexei Mikhailichenko led the trust for 20 years, but in 2000 he transferred the management of the company to Valentina Belyaeva

Fight for survival

The Welding and Assembly Trust was founded in 1947. During Soviet times, he built sites on almost all the main gas and oil pipelines of the country, participated in the development of 59 deposits, and even built the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline. “There were dozens of such trusts in the Minneftegazstroy system, but only one has survived,” Mikhail Altmark, first vice president of Stroygazconsulting, notes with regret.

In the early 1990s, large oil and gas construction projects stopped and for the first time the management of SMT had to think about business diversification. Aleksey Mikhailichenko, then head of the company, was familiar with the head of the Moscow Construction Complex, Vladimir Resin, and through him asked Yury Luzhkov, who at that time was the mayor of Moscow, to accept the trust as part of the city's construction assets. Resin's representative did not respond to RBC's request.

Luzhkov accepted the offer, and SMT began to build communications in new areas of Moscow. “We built water pipes, heating systems, sewerage in Mitino, Lyubertsy and Maryino. Then they began to build the second stage of Zelenograd, and for ten years they laid all the communications in this city. The trust did in a year what Moscow builders did in two years,” says Mikhailichenko proudly.

In 1993, corporatization took place. “They wanted to split us into departments of 350 people, but we did not allow this: general meeting decided that we wanted to become a shareholder single company”, Mikhailichenko recalls. At that time, 4.5 thousand people worked in the SMT. The privatization took place in two stages: first, employees bought out 50% plus one share of the company (top management then had only 1%). Three or four months later, the owners of the remaining 49%, the State Property Committee and the Moscow government, announced new auctions for 25% and 24% of the trust, respectively. “In order to buy out the remaining shares, we, together with the State Property Committee, had to open points for accepting applications for participation in auctions in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Ukhta (Komi),” says Mikhailichenko.

Until the end of the 1990s, the company continued to lay communications in Moscow and began to gasify the regions - Mordovia, Komi, and the Oryol region. “We survived the lack of money and the collapse of the currency, we were paid with cement and vodka. We built everything that was offered, and therefore survived: we did not refuse any work, ”says Belyaeva.

“Before the default, we invested the money we earned in projects frozen by Gazprom — we were slowly completing construction of facilities on own funds. It was clear that the concern would soon need these facilities anyway,” Mikhailichenko adds. “As a result, the company received payment for the constructed gas pipelines at the new, post-default rates.”

At the beginning of the noughties Russian economy began to grow, monopolies launched the construction of new pipelines. In 2000, SMT began work on the Tengiz-Novorossiysk (KTK) large-diameter oil pipelines and the Baltic Pipeline System, and later Gazprom also began building new lines.

In 2000, the head of LUKOIL, Vagit Alekperov, invited Alexei Mikhailichenko to head LUKOIL-Neftegazstroy (now Globalstroy-Engineering). “Alekperov promised large-scale projects, I agreed, and handed over the trust to Valentina,” says Mikhailichenko, who retained his seat on the trust’s board of directors. He returned to SMT in 2008, is now in charge of production and occupies an office opposite Belyaeva. The representative of LUKOIL did not respond to RBC's request.

"Construction of the Century" and SMT

"Sakhalin-2"
More than 800 km of oil and gas pipeline running in parallel and designed to transport gas from north to south of the island. SMT built 380 km of tracks on Sakhalin-2

​Gryazovets — Vyborg
The Russian part of Nord Stream is 917 km long and has a design capacity of 55 billion cubic meters. m per year. SMT built 190 km of the first string of the gas pipeline

Bovanenkovo-Ukhta and Ukhta-Torzhok
Gas pipelines with a length of about 1.1 thousand km, a design capacity of 140 billion cubic meters. m of gas per year and 1.3 thousand km, with a capacity of 81.5 billion cubic meters. m of gas per year, respectively. SMT built 134.5 km of pipes at Bovanenkovo ​​- Ukhta, 100 km at the Ukhta - Torzhok gas pipeline and two compressor stations - Chikshinskaya and Sosnogorskaya

After another crisis in 2008, the construction of gas pipelines proceeded unevenly; in 2010 and 2013, SMT's revenue fell by almost half compared to previous years. The trust was forced to look for other sources of income, for example, it built several compressor stations. The company exited these projects with losses, but Belyaeva claims that she decided to build the stations for image reasons: once again it was necessary to prove to large general contractors that "SMT can do it."

Customers and competitors

Workers of the Welding and Assembly Trust welded the first joints of many of the largest gas pipelines of recent years. In archival photographs from the beginning of the construction of the second string Gryazovets - Vyborg (through which export gas enters Nord Stream) in 2005 and the first string Bovanenkovo ​​- Ukhta (designed to transport gas from the Yamal fields) in 2008, Belyaeva is standing next to the head " Gazprom" by Alexey Miller.

Under her leadership, over the past 15 years, SMT has built sections of the Yamal-Europe, Pochinki-Gryazovets, Ukhta-Torzhok gas pipelines, both Gryazovets-Vyborg, the Southern Corridor, the Sakhalin-2 gas pipeline and the Sakhalin-2 oil pipeline, sections of the Tengiz-Novorossiysk and Baltiyskaya oil pipelines pipeline system on a contract with Transneft. “The company can make 400 km of large-diameter pipes per year, but on average we produce 200 km each – then the economy is normal,” says Belyaeva.


In 1983, the current general director of SMT, Valentina Belyaeva, was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for the introduction of an integrated method in the construction of main gas pipelines. (Photo: Anton Berkasov for RBC)

The main customer for such pipelines is Gazprom, but SMT rarely works directly with it. “For the last 10-12 years, most of our contracts have been subcontracting, so collecting a portfolio of orders every year is a test,” Belyaeva admits. When asked about who the main competitors of the trust are, he jokes: "That's it!" Most often, SMT concludes contracts with companies with which it competes in tenders, but the cost of the contract with this scheme is reduced by 30% or more. The representative of "Gazprom" did not respond to a request from RBC.

The bulk of Gazprom's contracts are traditionally divided between three main general contractors: Arkady Rotenberg's Stroygazmontazh, Stroytransgaz, controlled by Gennady Timchenko, and Stroygazconsulting, which grew under Ziyad Manasir and is now owned by Gazprombank and the UCP fund under the management Ilya Shcherbovich. How does SMT manage to survive surrounded by such giants?

“When choosing a subcontractor, we invite the Welding and Assembly Trust first,” says Andrey Klepach, Deputy General Director of Stroytransgaz for onshore oil and gas construction. According to him, the trust has a reputation as a company that always does what it promises: SMT can work on complex sites and has never failed. “We work with everyone who offers orders, and we always try to fulfill them with high quality,” Belyaeva agrees. She negotiates with clients personally. “Valentina never allowed anyone to sit on her neck,” Mikhail Altmark notes. “Belyayeva stands her ground to the last and defends the interests of the trust,” agrees Alexei Polyakov, general director of Transneft Sever, another major customer of SMT.

The heads of Stroytransgaz, Stroygazconsulting and Transneft, interviewed by RBC, could name only the Armenian company Zakneftegazstroy-Prometheus, which is similar to it in many respects, as a direct competitor to SMT, although it significantly reduced its presence in Russian market in recent years. “There are practically no subcontractors who are able to work on large-diameter pipes: some have disappeared into large general contractors [like Lengazspetsstroy and Krasnodargazstroy at Stroygazmontazh], others simply went bankrupt,” says Klepach.

The position of SMT in the market is determined by how successfully the company cooperates with major players such as Stroytransgaz, Stroygazconsulting and Stroygazmontazh, Sergey Ter-Sarkisyants, adviser to the general director of Stroytransgaz, summarizes.

Trust in yourself

“Valentina comes from the system of Minneftegazstroy, she kept both the old system and people in the trust,” said Mikhail Yakibchuk, First Vice President of Stroygazconsulting. “The most valuable thing for a contractor is people, and in SMT every person is five, they have been working together for decades,” Altmark insists.

At noon, at a long table in Belyaeva's office, Galina's secretary sets up dinner for the inhabitants of the second floor: earthenware, simple hearty food - salad, fish soup, and the second. Lunch looks the same in the canteen at the Black Dirt base near Moscow. Equipment is repaired here, materials are prepared for shipment to facilities, and welders are retrained. The buildings of the “Black Dirt”, wagons and even a gazebo near a small pond with crucian carp are decorated with carved forged gratings - they are made here in one of the workshops. Belyaeva visits the base regularly, at least once every two months. She personally checks the variety of dishes in the dining room and the cleanliness in the shops. “For the dirt in the workplace, the general director will pluck my mustache,” one of the employees of the Black Dirt jokes.

SMT in numbers

73.6 years— the average age of the members of the board of directors of SMT
53 years old works in SMT CEO Valentina Belyaeva
278% amounted to the trust's revenue growth in 2014
72,5% amounted to a drop in the trust's revenue in 2013



Belyaeva Valentina Yakovlevna - Head of the Integrated Process Flow No. 2 of the State Welding and Assembly Trust of the Ministry of Construction of Oil and Gas Enterprises gas industry THE USSR.

She was born on December 31, 1937 in the village of Alekseevka, Kamyzyaksky District, Astrakhan District, Stalingrad Region, now Kamyzyaksky District, Astrakhan Region. Russian.

Graduated high school in 1953, she entered the Astrakhan Oil College, from where she transferred to the Stalingrad Oil College and graduated in 1957. Since 1957, he has been an operator of the unit, head of the unit at the Novogorkovsky oil refinery in the city of Kstovo, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) region.

Since 1962, throughout his life, he has been continuously working in the State Welding and Assembly Trust, which was then located in the city of Zheleznovodsk, Stavropol Territory and carried out the construction of the Zaterechny-Grozny oil pipeline and the Stavropol-Ukraine-Moscow-Leningrad gas pipeline. The first position in the trust is a gasification master.

But already in 1963, the trust was transferred to the development of oil and gas fields in Western Siberia and was based in the city of Uray, Tyumen Region, where it performed the tasks of building the Druzhba oil pipeline. Together with the trust, V.Ya. arrived in Siberia. Belyaeva, worked as a foreman construction site, foreman, head of the construction and installation section of the construction and installation department No. 13. Since 1967 - head of the section of specialized department No. 4 of the trust in Perm, since 1970 - head of the section of specialized department No. 6 of the trust in Ukhta, Komi ASSR. Since 1980, as part of the trust, she has been working on laying the main route of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline.

Since 1982 - the head of the complex technological flow No. 2 of the welding and assembly trust, continuing work on the construction of the same gas pipeline. On the stream, the stream-dissected method of organizing construction proposed by her and the team contract were introduced. This organization of labor made it possible to achieve the rate of laying pipes in the main gas pipeline at 21 kilometers per month, which is 2.5 times higher than industry standard.

For outstanding services in the construction of oil and gas industry enterprises and in connection with early commissioning main gas pipeline Urengoy - Pomary - Uzhgorod for installed capacity By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of October 6, 1983 Belyaeva Valentina Yakovlevna He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.

Continues to work in the industry at the same enterprise (since 1993 - a joint-stock company). Since 1988 - head of the specialized department No. 4 of the trust. Since February 2000 - CEO joint-stock company"Welding and assembly trust", which is building gas pipelines and oil pipelines throughout the territory Russian Federation. Over the years of work in the industry, with her direct participation and under her leadership, the oil pipelines Shaim - Tyumen, Gorky - Ryazan, Gorky - Yaroslavl, Tengiz - Novorossiysk, gas pipelines Punga - Ukhta - Torzhok, Vyngapur - Chelyabinsk, Central Asia - Center, "Shine of the North ”, Nyuksenitsa - Plesetsk-Mirny, Yamal - Europe, SRTO - Torzhok, Gryazovets - Vyborg, Bovashinovo - Ukhta, the Baltic Pipeline System, the North European Gas Pipeline, a distribution transshipment complex for oil products in the city of Vysotsk, the Yuzhno-Shapkinskoye oil and gas condensate field with a main oil product pipeline was developed , a lot others. In 2013, the personal fortune of V.Ya. Belyaeva was estimated at 65 million US dollars.

She was elected a deputy of the Pochinkovsky District Council of People's Deputies (Gorky Region).

Lives in the Hero City of Moscow.

She was awarded the Orders of Lenin (10/06/1983), the Red Banner of Labor (03/02/1981), the medal "For Labor Distinction" (07/01/1966), and other medals.

State Prize of the Republic of Mordovia (2000). "Honored Builder of the Russian Federation" (05/31/1998). "Honorary oil and gas builder" (2002).

Women's affairs with big business

Just do not compare them with Vassa Zheleznova. Otherwise, the enlightened public will laugh for a long, long time, to the point of tears. The heroine of the Gorky play is by no means a model for modern business women. Another century, a different pace and style of life, something European, something American. Although let's be fair: some of our entrepreneurs still "do business too Russian", demonstrating an irresistible will, exceptional determination and a stubborn unwillingness to raise their hands up when attacking merciless competitors.

"Sickle and Hammer" of the general director of the trust

Perhaps the most non-standard, most striking character in the ranking of fifty published in the autumn issue of the quarterly business publication Forbeswoman. richest women Russia can be considered the general director of JSC "Welding and Assembly Trust" (SMT) Valentina Belyaeva. Experts estimate her fortune - 19.9% ​​of SMT shares - at $50 million. But who, tell me, will try to estimate how much this woman, who has been doing one thing for more than half a century - the construction of main pipelines in the country, has endured on her shoulders.

She is from the generation of "children of war". Her native village Alekseevka was not in the front line. But even there, not far from the Caspian, one could feel the harsh breath of the great Stalingrad battle. In the mid-fifties, young Valentina will come to the hero city. After graduating from an oil technical school in Stalingrad, she will go to her first construction site in Kstovo, where the Novogorkovsky Oil Refinery was being built. Then she will have a lot of them, construction projects - in a vast area from the Sakhalin to the Baltic coast.

Let's think for a moment: why did Boris Evdokimovich Shcherbina, who headed the Ministry of Construction of Oil and Gas Industry Enterprises of the USSR for more than ten years, appoint Valentina Belyaeva in 1982 as the head of the Integrated Technological Flow No. 3 at the construction of the transcontinental gas pipeline Urengoy - Pomary - Uzhgorod? Wasn't there a highly experienced Siberian engineer in the industry for this position? Yes, everything is simple: the famous minister knew the cadres of builders very well. He knew that even the foremen-aces admitted: "Belyayeva is a specialist with a divine spark. Her decisions are always verified and accurate."

In 1983, Valentina Belyaeva experienced her finest hour: the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued on awarding her the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.

Imagine how a professional accuser, playing the role of a left-wing radical in front of his household, will start up at these words, how he will scream hysterically: our heroine has become bourgeois, has become a privatizer. Yes, Belyaeva and her closest employees privatized SMT. But any other options could be disastrous for the team. It is easy to guess what would have happened to the trust if it had been taken over by patented swindlers, "guild members" with a criminal past, who sewed slippers and caps. Nothing would have been left of it - it would have been resold and plundered many times over.

SMT survived in the "dashing nineties". And its specialists, who went through an excellent Soviet school, did not remain idle. They participated in the implementation of major projects in recent years. Such as the gas pipeline Yamal - Europe, the Baltic pipeline system and others.

Elena Baturina changed region

It was in the "dashing nineties" that the business career of Elena Baturina began, which, with a fortune of one billion dollars, is the first in the list of the richest entrepreneurs in the Russian Federation. In an interview with Forbeswoman, she proudly said that a study of her "worker-peasant ancestry right up to the 16th century" testified: in the Baturin family "there is no one but Russians."

But it was not this "discovery" that influenced the transformation of the creator of a modest metropolitan cooperative into a hostess big company"Inteco". Other springs have worked here. Clearly, she is unlikely to ever agree that her "ascent to a billion" would have been impossible without the active use of the huge administrative resource that her husband, Yuri Luzhkov, who served as mayor of Moscow for 18 years, had at his disposal. And yet, and yet...

After his resignation in 2010, she sold Inteko to Mikhail Shishkhanov, who is a member of the Gutseriev oligarchic clan as a close relative. “While I have completed the “business in Russia” project, that’s for sure. Probably, my insight and wisdom, so to speak, “sung” in the media, do not allow me to step on the same rake,” he said not without humor. However, he does not interfere with feeling: the ex-mayor's wife knows her own worth. Yes, and Yuri Luzhkov does not miss the opportunity to pay tribute to his wife's talents: "I still admire the eccentricity of my wife. She always, even in acute cases, finds non-standard solutions."

But in the case of "ambassadorial lands" the word "always" is clearly out of place. Let's not think about how the Inteko company got the space, which, according to Foreign Ministry officials, was intended for the construction of Moscow representative offices of foreign states. We only note that after the resignation of Luzhkov, this tidbit of the capital's space was seized by the Russian authorities. But, apparently, Baturina still hopes for a successful outcome: she wrote and still writes to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the illegal, from her point of view, seizure of "embassy lands" and is suing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

There are many connoisseurs of "Moscow life" who know whose side the capital's court would have taken seven or eight years ago. But let's not engage in frivolous historical reconstructions. Let’s better listen to how projects in the West are being implemented in which money received from the sale of Inteko has been invested: “In principle, we are now continuing to do the same thing that we did in Russia - construction, development. We just changed the region, now we are working in America and Europe". How easy and simple, it turns out, in the global world economy: they just changed the region...

And one more amazing statement: "By the way, I was pleasantly surprised: it seemed to me that the most profitable business can only be done here, in Russia.” According to Baturina, if the projects in the West are chosen correctly, then “the profitability can be comparable to that which we received in Russia, even higher.”

But this is hard to believe. Nowhere on the planet, except for our country, the highest officials were not engaged with such zeal in the high-speed cultivation of dollar billionaires. No wonder, in post-Soviet Russia, successive governments invariably followed the main neoliberal slogan: "The less state in the economy, the better for the economy." In order to grow the first hundred billionaires, gardeners from the Cabinet took not centuries, not decades, but a few years.

The Parable of the Fishing Rod and the Swamp with Frogs

To get an idea of ​​Baturina's business interests, it is not enough to mention construction and development. Do not forget about the network of four hotels in Austria, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Russia, managed from its head office in London, about a project in the field of alternative energy, which is supposed to be implemented in Italy, and, of course, about Luzhkov's agribusiness in the Kaliningrad region. He "plans to feed the Russian fleet with buckwheat", wants to recreate the Romanov breed of sheep. His special care is for horses: after all, they evoke memories of the time when Elena Baturina went in for equestrian sports.

The oligarchic world is bizarre and cruel. Its inhabitants live a life that does not intersect with the original folk. They often make surprised eyes: why so many poor people in "society equal opportunities"? Well, we, like them, received in 1991 not a fish, but a fishing rod. But for some reason, our bite is always excellent, and their float does not even twitch. Well, let's answer the metaphor with a metaphor: just you officials seated at the lured fishing spot, sending the poor to the swampy shore of a swamp covered with mud, where only frogs are found. However, the business of the super-rich, convinced that they have managed to wrap everyone around their fingers, is not as stable as it might seem. At the first breath of the financial and economic crisis, they send a signal "SOS" to the government. This winter, it has spent hundreds of billions of rubles on saving private banks and enterprises.

And ahead of the Cabinet of new expenses. The August turmoil in the global stock market caused panic in the community of Russian oligarchs. When they came to their senses, they discovered that several entrepreneurs, whose assets had plummeted in value, had to leave the ranks of dollar billionaires. Among them was Alexander Lutsenko, who together with his wife Natalya owns 90% of the shares of the Sodruzhestvo company, which started with the sale of animal feed. Then, having built oil extraction plants in the Kaliningrad Special Economic Zone, it became one of the largest vegetable oil producers in the Russian Federation. A similar specialization belongs to the Sodruzhestvo-owned terminal in Kaliningrad, which transships tropical vegetable oils.

In general, the business of the married couple, whose combined fortune was estimated at $ 1.1 billion, was very profitable. And it is not surprising that in the Forbeswoman rating, Natalya Lutsenko followed Baturina under the second number: after all, her capital "weighed" 550 million dollars. But now this is yesterday's figure. After counting the losses suffered by the family tandem at the end of the summer, it, according to experts, may decrease by a quarter.

Revaluation problems own assets Guzelia Safina, Deputy General Director of TAIF Group, who, with a fortune of $430 million, ranks third in the list of the richest entrepreneurs in our country, did not pass by. Now the company, where she has been working for almost twenty years, is going through hard times. The brothers Airat and Radik Shaimiev, the sons of the first president of Tatarstan, who are among the co-owners of TAIF, have recently lost the status of dollar billionaires. Nothing can be done, the collapse of the global stock market is usually accompanied by emptying the pockets of careless magnates. But Kamilya, the granddaughter of Mintimer Shaimiev, who ruled the republic until March 2010, made the right decision: in the summer of 2014, she sold her two percent stake in TAIF. Apparently very successful. According to the women's business publication, her current net worth is $190 million.

The ex-wife of the oligarch has the wrong address

Caught at the helm of hydrocarbon, industrial, transport, construction, information technology and other companies of various profiles, our entrepreneurs diligently demonstrate that the ladies' aphorism: "Weakness is our strength" is not about them. Often their management style is much tougher than that of men. As one business woman said, "we have any manifestations of sentimentality - vulgarity, and nothing more."

Of course, we must keep in mind: even a complete transfer of capital to related female hands does not yet mean that yesterday's business owner retired forever. Sometimes this is just a front operation, allowing, in particular, federal officials to avoid charges of violating legal and ethical standards: they say, you have a conflict of interest, doing business, you use your official position. But once the assets go to the clerk's wife, he's clean and spotless.

For several years, we have been hearing from the press service of the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation: Igor Shuvalov is not engaged in business and is not involved in management family capital. Here the first violin is played by his wife Olga - the main custodian of the common "pod" with 125 million dollars.

Well, now about one of the predecessors of Igor Shuvalov - Vladimir Potanin, who served as First Deputy Prime Minister in 1996-1997. The inventor of loans-for-shares auctions, he launched the next stage of the plunder of the Soviet industrial heritage: highly profitable industrial giants were sold to the “chosen ones” for pennies. Naturally, Potanin and his partner Mikhail Prokhorov were not left without a prize, they got the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine.

By the standards of the business community, life has been a success: this spring, Potanin, whose capital, according to Forbes magazine, has grown to $15.4 billion, has become the richest entrepreneur in the Russian Federation. But is the pedestal on which the oligarch was erected so strong? The fact is that he has a series of lawsuits ahead of him with an unpredictable outcome. The ex-wife of super-rich man No. 1, who filed lawsuits in Russia, the United States and Cyprus, claims a half of Potanin's stake in Norilsk Nickel and Interros.

This story could be considered unworthy of public attention, if not for one circumstance. If she wins the case in court, Natalya Potanina "plans to transfer control to the state" of the assets of Nornickel passing into her ownership. She did not take into account one thing: the mission of our government is not to manage private capital - it is sacred and inviolable for officials, but to sell off state-owned companies. It is now calm at the privatization fair. And the crisis will end, and its gates will open wide to the exclamations of barkers: "Swoop in, gentlemen! State property is getting cheaper right before our eyes!"

 

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