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Russia's richest woman sells Sberbank shares

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Russia's richest woman Yelena Baturina and other shareholders are selling their shares in the country's largest state-owned bank Sberbank, a business daily said on Wednesday.
MOSCOW, August 20 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's richest woman Yelena Baturina and other shareholders are selling their shares in the country's largest state-owned bank Sberbank, a business daily said on Wednesday.

Sberbank's shares owned by Baturina's Continental, a closed unit investment fund, almost halved over three months, Vedomosti said, dropping from 10.8 billion rubles ($439.6 million) at the end of the first quarter of 2008 to 6.2 billion rubles ($252.3 million) by the first half of the year. Continental now holds a 0.38% stake in the bank down from 0.68%.

The fund, which earned 5.4 billion rubles ($219.8 million) from the sale, manages the businesswoman's assets in Moscow'-based construction company Inteco, Russian energy giant Gazprom, Sberbank and Russia's largest state-owned oil company Rosneft.

"Baturina is not the first large [minority] Sberbank shareholder or borrower to reduce her share in the bank since the arrival of new management," Vedomosti reported.

Former economics minister German Gref was elected Sberbank's CEO late in November 2007. Sberbank's previous chief Andrei Kazmin now heads the Russian postal service.

"Gref has refused to issue as many loans to these [minority] shareholders as the previous management," the paper quoted an unnamed top manager from a Western investment bank as saying.

Sberbank has made no comment on the shareholders' move.

Baturina, the 45-year-old second wife of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, has amassed billions of dollars through her construction company Inteco, formed in 1991. Forbes magazine estimates her wealth at $4.2 billion.

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