Moscow, July 11,  2012 - PIK Group, a leading Russian real estate developer focusing on large scale residential projects within the Moscow Metropolitan Area and selected Russian regions, has started collaboration with non-governmental pension fund BLAGOSOSTOYANIE for its commercial real estate infrastructure management program, PIK Retail.

Launched last autumn, PIK Retail is a centralised street retail property management program. The main goals of the program is lifestyle quality improvement in the Group's residential districts. Whereas previously commercial properties were sold to various retailers piece by piece, under the PIK Retail scheme PIK Group creates unified ownership and centralised property management of commercial premises of its townships.

According to the program, a portfolio of PIK Group's commercial real estate premises will be included into Closed End Share Real Estate Investment Funds (or ZPIFNs, Russian regulated REITs), which will contain commercial ground floors of residential buildings and neighbourhood shopping centres within the Group's projects. ZPIFN investors have an opportunity to invest in a centralised lease to a balanced tenant-mix in large residential development schemes. The tenancy mix is based on the needs of the district residents and the market research conducted by leading international retail consultants. From the neighbourhood retailers, PIK Retail is seeking to attract well-known customer-oriented companies as well as new brands.

BLAGOSOSTOYANIE was established 16 years ago and is one of the largest Russian non-governmental pension funds. PIK Group is delighted to have secured such a well-known and prestigious investor in its first ZPIFNs and believes that the support of BLAGOSOSTOYANIE provides a strong endorsement of a new investment product which offers an attractive long term cash flow profile for financial institutions. At the first stage of collaboration, BLAGOSOTOYANIE's investments is more than 310 million rubles. The current portfolio of PIK Retail assets is 2 billion rubles.

Artem Eyramdzhants, First Vice President of PIK Group commented: "We are proud to have as a partner one of the leading non-governmental pension funds in Russia. Our main goal is to create a better quality lifestyle for our customers. We want to develop a balanced social and retail infrastructure with the entire necessary urban infrastructure within walking distance for all our customers".

Yuri Novozhilov, COO of BLAGOSOSTOYANIE commented: "The Fund's investment policy is to pay a special attention to real economy sector, which provides security, liability and profitability of long term pension money investments. PIK Retail program meets all the mentioned above requirements, simultaneously playing an important social role in improving the infrastructure of Moscow and the Moscow region".

 

About PIK-Group

 

PIK-Group is a leading Russian real estate developer, focusing on large-scale residential projects within the Moscow Metropolitan Area and selected Russian regions. Since its foundation in 1994, PIK-Group has become a market leader in  mass market residential property sector completing over 180 000 apartments of affordable housing across the country. The Group  has  a substantial diversified land bank of net selling area of 6.9 million square meters and a dedicated professional team with over 11,000 employees. Given its brand recognition and the scale of its operations, in 2008 the Russian Government included PIK on the list of the nation’s strategically important companies. For more information please visit: http://www.pik-group.com

About NPF BLAGOSOSTOYANIE

 

One of the biggest non-governmental pension funds in Russia. Active on the pension market for 16 years. Its branch network cocnsists of 19 subsidiary and 60 branches that serve its clients in 80 regions of the country.

As of today over 276,6 thousand retirees are receiving pension from the fund. The fund has over 1,1 mln clients served with non-governmental Pension Scheme and over 1,7 mln people insured with Obligatory Pension Scheme. The size of Funds assets is 237,7 billion rubles, the size of Pension Savings – 67 billion rubles, the size of Pension Reserves – 160,7 billion rubles*.

BLAGOSOSTOYANIE has been given the highest category of security and success «А++» according to a rating agency «Expert RA» and the highest rating of security according to a National Rating Agency (NRA). The Fund's management company  is investment group TRINFICO. For more detailed information, please, refer to www.npfb.ru

* According to FSFM as of  April 1st, 2012.