The assets have been offered to Lev Kvetnoy’s “Novotsement” Company, Lafarge Cement and HeidelbergCement. Heidelberg Cement (with industrial capacity in Russia 2.83 million tons per year) has already carried out the due-diligence of Baturina’s cement works (“Atakaytsement” and “Verkhebakansky tsemzavod” with industrial capacity 600 thousand tons per year) and decided not to accept the offer due to assets’ overprice. Now both plants are supplying the Olympics building projects and thus have a lot of orders, but when the Olympics are over, they will face the decline in demand and their price will decrease, HeidelbergCement’s experts think.    

In 2010 the Inteco’s plants produced estimated 600 thousand tons of cement, their potential capacity being 2.6 million tons.

The rumours that Elena Baturina is going to sell her business in Russia have been circulating since Yury Luzhkov’s resignation. In November 2010 it became known that Inteco’s assets were being scrutinized by VTB, Yury Kovalchuk (co-owner of Russia bank and Surgutneftegaz oil-and-gas campany) and Suleyman Kerimov (Nafta Moskva). In December the Inteko was carrying on negotiations with Vasily Anisimov, the owner of Coalco, about selling the cement works, but the sides had not agreed on price.   

Experts believe that the acquisition deal will be forced, because Elena Baturina has to pay her debts. As of the previous year, the Inteco’s debt was estimated $1.075 billion, Baturina’s gross assets – $ 1.569 billion, her private assets – $ 493.5 billion.