Bloomberg Moscow
THE opening in Moscow of Europe’s biggest shopping mall comes at an inopportune moment for investors backing the project.
The Aviapark mall opens its doors on Friday, just as Russia is headed towards recession and its businesses are contending with international sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.
Meantime, the rouble’s plunge to record lows, rising interest rates and the fastest inflation since July 2011 are eating into consumers’ finances. “It’s not the best time for opening such a large venue,” said Ivan Fedyakov, the general director of researcher INFOLine.
At 230 000m2 of space for about 550 stores, the glass-roofed mall will overtake the MetroCentre in England when it opens for business. It is triple the size of the nearby Metropolis mall, acquired last year by Morgan Stanley for $1.2 billion (R13bn) in Russia’s largest ever real-estate deal.
The development may have cost as much as $1bn, including land and planning permits, Colliers International estimates. Investors include the son of billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, a childhood friend of President Vladimir Putin.
Russian retail sales growth stagnated at 1.7 percent in October from a year earlier as joblessness rose to the highest since April. – Bloomberg