Ulan Bator's Central Tower, the Mongolian capital's first upmarket office block and workplace of Battsengel Gotov, chief executive of the Mongolian Mining Corporation, is a snapshot of the wealth inequality being created by the resource-rich, nomadic nation's mining boom.
While the impoverished nation has no McDonald's, 7-Eleven or any domestic equivalents, Louis Vuitton opened in Central Tower in October 2009, the same month Mongolia said global miners Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe Mines could develop Oyu Tolgoi, a vast copper and gold deposit in the Gobi desert that is almost as big as Macau.
On the day of Battsengel's interview, an elderly nomad man dressed in a fur hat, horseriding boots and deel, the long, belted gowns that handily convert into blankets, is standing outside the Louis Vuitton, staring, fascinated, at the shop.
'Every day, more come to see,' a lady working in Central Tower's lobby says.
Mongolian Mining Corporation (MMC), the nation's biggest exporter of coking coal, raised US$651 million in a Hong Kong initial public offering in October. It was the first Mongolian-owned company to float in Hong Kong and around 1 per cent of the shares were bought by Mongolian nationals, who will have done well. MMC's stock had risen 25 per cent above the HK$7.02 offering price.
But Battsengel, a 38-year-old, smiley big-boned chemistry PhD in a well tailored suit, cannot get the IPO proceeds back into his country. The aim, he says, is 'to spend every single cent' in Mongolia.
That, however, would be a problem. Mongolia could not absorb MMC's US$651 million without creating hyperinflation and causing the currency to rise to the point where exporters collapsed.
