RBC daily reports Saint-Petersburg-based LSR Group made an official statement related to their recent acquisition of Yekaterinburg-based NOVA-Group (one of the local market’s major developers). According to LSR Group’s General Director Igor Levit, the enterprise has already invested some $500m in the development of the building industry in Sverdlovsk Region.

The terms of the transaction state that LSR Group is to get NOVA Group’s land allotments and industrial enterprises, while the developer gets to keep its image-building projects.

LSR Group is planning to set up a company responsible for managing its assets with headquarters in Yekaterinburg. The Group’s PR Director Yulia Sokolova says the company will probably have been set up by the end of summer or in the early fall of 2008.

‘We need a developer entity to improve on the existing facilities located in the Urals. LSR Group now owns two land allotments in Yekaterinburg with the total area of sixty hectares, meant for futre apartment buildings. In addition, we own an 87% shareholding of Betfor, a major house-building factory. A portion of our investments will be directed to the development of Betfor’s concrete and gas-concrete production facilities and in the possible acquisition of NOVA-Group’s other assets. Besides, we might set up a brick-production facility and a company dealing in rental building equipment, primarily tower cranes,’ Igor Levit observed.