The block of shares was listed at the initial price of 1.448 billion rubles. The winning bidder was the Prominekspo LLC. The auction was attended by only two organizations (name of the second bidder was not disclosed).
WTC's main asset is the eponymous multifunctional business complex with an area of 270,000 sqm. This business complex includes office and exhibition areas, a conference center and the Crowne Plaza WTC Moscow Hotel.
The WTC Company also owns several hotels in different areas of the city - Eridan-1, Eridan-2, and the 3-star Soyuz Hotel.
Moscow first tried to sell this facility in the autumn of 2011. The Russian Auction House in Moscow tried selling the block of shares at an initial price of 1.445 billion rubles, but could not find anybody interested in buying.
The company buying the minority stake in the WTC, Prominekspo, was founded in 1960, as the only company in the USSR having the right to design exhibition equipment. However, beginning in 2010, the company chose a new path for future development and started building office and hotel complexes, residential housing, road construction and specialized construction (gas and oil sector).
We should mention that, as part of the privatization program, shares in various companies owned by the city were sold at auction. Thus, over the past year the city has auctioned off the hotels Natsional and Metropol, as well as its stakes in the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya Hotel and Novinsky Passage MFC.
Experts say that the WTC is a very interesting and profitable asset. "Seeing that the office and congress center are in high demand, and the hotel industry is managed by an international operator of Crowne Plaza Hotels, the risks of the asset can be estimated as average, tending towards the low. The purchaser already owned a controlling share in this case, and merely increased its stake in the project. Purchasing shares in a project with quality assets means enjoying a stable income," says Tatiana Tikova, director of appraisals and consulting at Colliers International.
