Elena Baturina is the Richest and Only Russian Businesswoman in 2018 Forbes List

- The latest ranking of the World's Billionaires lists only one Russian woman, the international entrepreneur and philanthropist Elena Baturina. Her fortune has increased by $200 million and now constitutes $1.2 billion, while her rank in the listing is up 73 points to #1867. It is her 13th consecutive year as Russia's richest woman; she is also the only businesswoman in Eastern Europe with the wealth of over $1 billion. Being the only independent self-made woman in the construction section of the Forbes billionaires list, Elena Baturina did not get into this industry straight away. She started her first business in 1989 by setting up a software production company. A couple of years later, she registered her company 'Inteco' as a plastics manufacturer, but it soon expanded to encompass a number of businesses in the construction sector. In that field, the company became one of the country's leaders with a wide-ranging portfolio of projects in Russia and abroad. Elena headed Inteco for two decades, and sold it in 2011. After that, Baturina moved her business headquarters to Europe. Since that time, she has been engaged in a number of successful commercial endeavours. At present her assets include a network of hotels (Ireland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Russia), renewable energy interests (Italy and Greece), a membrane construction enterprise (Germany), and development projects in the US and EU. In addition, she has invested in a number of real estate investment funds focused on residential and commercial construction and development in the UK and US. Elena Baturina is active in philanthropy mostly through the BE OPEN Foundation she set up in 2011. It is a cultural and social initiative which supports the promising new minds of the next generation through a system of conferences, competitions, exhibitions, master classes and art events. Among other things, BE OPEN is currently working in close partnership with the Mayor's Fund for London on a number of educational initiatives. An all-time high of 256 women made the 2018 Forbes World's Billionaires rankings; their collective net worth topped $1 trillion, up 20% since last year. Baturina is one of the 72 self-made women in the "three comma club", and though this figure is up from 56 a year ago, the self-starters constitute only a quarter of the female moguls, while most of them inherited their fortunes.