Russian property tycoon bets on modular

A Russian housing boom stoked by Kremlin-backed mortgage discounts and an exodus from dilapidated Soviet-era city-centre apartments has turned Sergei Gordeev’s PIK into one of Europe’s biggest property developers. The company built 40,000 housing units last year and now has a market capitalisation of $12bn . Following fresh fundraising of  $493m in secondary public offering in Moscow on Friday, PIK is looking  push into prefabricated blocks it says will take just two weeks to build. The firm says Unit, its new modular housing division, will dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of its housing. The FT (£)