«Vagit Alekperov, president of LUKOIL», has become co-owner of «one of the most prestigious places for luxury yachts in the European region».
Russian billionaire together with Qatar investment bank QInvest bought harbor OneOcean Port Vell in Barcelona. The seller was the company Salamanca Group from the UK.
Newly-made owners of 160-meter berth did not share the information on how much they bought, and in what shares executed ownership. But, according to an anonymous industry source, the deal could have been worth more than $2 billion.
The British company acquired the marina in 2010 and invested more than €100 million in its development. The first thing the investors did was to make the harbour able to accommodate vessels longer than 80 metres. Last year their number at the moorings of OneOcean Port Vell almost doubled and the number of yachts of 100+ metres increased seven times.
Thanks to the efforts of the Salamanca Group these yachts can now enter the harbour up to 190 metres long and the capacity of the harbour allows more than 150 boats to be parked at the same time.
OneOcean Port Vell is recognised as one of the most successful superyacht marinas in the Mediterranean. The marina's infrastructure includes warehouses, restaurants, beauty salons, fitness center, clubhouse, bars, parking and much more. And for ships under 24-hour security, each marina has fuel and water refills, power sources and waste water collection services. So, the luxury marina generates good income not only from renting and selling berths for boats.
Vagit Alekperov himself, co-owner of «LUKoil», has a rather modest by the standards of Russian tycoons (cf. Roman Abramovich's Eclipse or Andrei Melnichenko) 70-meter yacht Galactica Super Nova, built last year at his own Heesen Yachts yard in the Netherlands.
