STATE ASSETS agency Nama is poised to sell the Morrison Hotel in Dublin to Yelena Baturina, one of Russia’s richest women.
Nama is in the final stages of negotiating the sale of the hotel, which has been on the market since September, for between €20 million and €25 million.
Ms Baturina is bidding for the property through a London-based asset management firm. The deal has not yet been done but it is expected to be signed at some stage next week.
Her bid is the highest of a short list of three or four formally made to Nama in the closing weeks of 2011. The hotel originally attracted expressions of interest from Irish and overseas players.
Ms Baturina’s wealth is estimated at $1.2 billion (€947 million). She has interests in construction, manufacturing, farming and property. She is one of a handful of Russian women whose wealth is said to be more than $1 billion.
No stranger to controversy, she is married to Yuriy Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow sacked by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 amid allegations of corruption and poor management.
She had set up her main business, Inteco, in 1991. The following year, her husband took over the influential post of Moscow mayor.
Inteco was originally focused on plastics manufacture but moved into construction as opportunities opened up in Moscow and elsewhere during the 1990s.
The company won a number of municipal contracts in Moscow, sparking claims of corruption and favouritism.
The business began to move out of construction midway through the last decade and sold a cement manufacturing operation for over $1 billion in 2005.
The couple bought a house in London in 2010 and later told the media they were sending their two daughters to school in Britain to protect them from “intimidation” in Russia.
The Morrison Hotel was part of businessman Hugh O’Regan’s pub and hotel empire until Nama appointed Martin Ferris as receiver in 2010. The agency placed the property on the market in September, and formal bids were made in November.
According to reports last month, the hotel traded profitably last year.
