Page 42 - bne_Magazine_May_2017_print

42 I Cover story bne May 2017
Businesswomen seek a seat at the top table
From left to right: Yelena Baturina, Gulnara Karimova, Tzvetelina Borislavova, Umut Shayakhmetova, Elvira Nabiullina, Valeria Gontareva
Examples like Baturina are few and far between. The only other female oligarch to emerge from the former Soviet Union was Gulnara Karimova, the elder daughter of Uzbekistan’s former President Islam Karimov. Karimova allegedly used her position to take stakes in the country’s most successful businesses from mobile telecoms to mining, a practice that gained her a reputation as a “robber baron” and the “most hated person in the country”, according to a 2005 US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.
She amassed a fortune estimated at around $700mn, and was for several years considered a potential successor to her father. However, she fell from grace after an apparent power struggle in 2013, and she was stripped of her assets and placed under house arrest.
Another rare example, this time from Bulgaria, is Tzvetelina Borislavova, who set up her private investment company, Clever Synergies Investment Fund, in 2005, building up a fortune of €185mn. Borislavova is also the ex- girlfriend of Bulgaria’s former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov.
Clare Nuttall in Bucharest
The communist legacy of women’s strong role in the workplace
has endured across CEE and the former Soviet Union. But the fall of communism has been followed by suc- cessive backlashes against feminism,
on top of persistent social and cultural issues holding back businesswomen and female entrepreneurs.
There is no shortage of women starting up businesses, but when it comes to the largest companies in countries across the region, virtually all are owned by and managed by men. With a handful of exceptions, self-made women in the post-communist world are usually those who have grown a successful business as part of a husband and wife team.
Others that have entered the rich lists for their countries are the wives or daughters of successful businessmen. Almost all the female billionaires from the region covered by bne IntelliNews are from Turkey, and all have inherited their wealth.
This is not seen – yet – in the post- communist world, where the super rich are first generation; most made their
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fortunes in the “wild capitalism” years of the 1990s. Virtually all were men.
The “femigarchs”
The sole female oligarch, and Russia’s only female billionaire, to have emerged from that turbulent period of history is Yelena Baturina, who built up a construction empire in the 1990s and is now the owner of landmark hotels across Europe.
Born in 1963, Baturina launched her first business, an IT company, alongside her brother Viktor in 1989, two years before the collapse of communism. In 1991, the year she married fellow Muscovite and future Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, she founded Inteko, initially a plastics com- pany that later moved into construction. During the nearly two decades Luzhkov served as Moscow mayor, Baturina diver- sified into areas such as construction materials, as well as securing lucrative contracts, including one to provide seat- ing for Moscow’s giant Luzhniki stadium.
Shortly before the international econom- ic crisis and the collapse of the real estate market, she exited some of her invest- ments to buy Russian blue-chip shares, later using these to keep Inteco afloat.