RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin lays foundation for new business school funded by Russia's oligarchs

Russia's business oligarchs made their billions as streetwise operators and are now opening their wallets to fund a prestigious business school to train a new generation of high-flying managers. Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich, steel magnate Alexei Mordashov and other billionaires are chipping in USD5 million apiece to back the Skolkovo business school near Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin laid the foundation stone of the futuristic campus designed by London-based architect David Adjaye, on Thursday (September 21) evening at Skolkovo. The school is expected to take in its first students in 2009. "The successful creation of business schools will be a positive contribution to the development of the entire Russian economy," Putin said at the ceremony held on the grounds of the future school. The financial backers of the project are thinking big, they want to end the management talent deficit that could hold back Russia's economy and create a rival to U.S. business schools like Harvard. Investment banker Ruben Vardanyan, who has championed the USD300 million project, calls it an investment in human capital that Russia will need if it is to move away from its dependency on oil and gas. The business school will charge USD50,000 for its 18-month Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme. It will also offer its students scholarships from an endowment fund. Among the 14 backers are leading foreign investors, including India's Sun Group, who have a history of investing in Russia dating back nearly 50 years, and Anglo-Russian oil venture TNK-BP. Vice-Chairman Shiv Vikram Khemka told Reuters that Sun had come onboard after backing a similar business school in Hyderabad. Three out of every 100,000 Russians have an MBA, compared to 70 out of 100,000 in the United States. There are around 100 MBA programmes on offer in Russia, but many have poor credentials. Consequently many aspiring executives prefer to seek management education abroad. Knowledge-based industries is already eight years into an economic boom expected to deliver economic growth of nearly 7 percent this year.

ITN Source | September 25, 2006

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