Vekselberg hopes over 20 Italian companies will join Skolkovo project

ROME, February 17 (Itar-Tass) -- Skolkovo innovation project chief
manager Viktor Vekselberg said he was hopeful that more than 20 Italian companies, including ENI and ENEL, will join in.
"We are negotiating with more than 30 companies, including such energy companies as ENI and ENEL," Vekselberg said.
"We should not expect multi-billion investments from these companies, but the results of the research in which they will get involved should produce results," the businessman said.
According to Vekselberg, since the creation of the Fund "quite a large amount of work has been done, which has served as the basis for the meeting agenda."
Projects to be undertaken by the companies working at the Skolkovo
innovation centre will have to meet stringent requirements, Vekselberg
said.
He named two of them: "projects that will be implemented through
co-financing" and mandatory participation of "both Russian universities and academia, and foreign partners and foreign specialists, including individuals, who would be a factor of support to some extent."
Speaking of foreign venture companies that have an interest in
Skolkovo, Vekselberg, said the process of familiarisation was underway and "more systemic" relations were being formed with companies that have experience of working in Russia.
"It is very important for us to emphasise the level of trust, comfort and understanding. Russia is an interesting market, it's an environment where venture capital can exist. This is fundamentally important for us," he said.
Vekselberg also stressed that projects would have to meet "a rather high level of requirements".
Russian presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich called for finding a
correct balance between two key tasks when implementing the Skolkovo
project: being an innovation centre and acting as a driving force for
innovation development of Russia as a whole.