Medvedev unveils brand new business school

A new business school set up to raise Russia's next generation of top managers has been unveiled by President Dmitry Medvedev near Moscow.

The businessmen who funded the project say the new school will have one of the best MBA programs in the world.

From the very outset the “Skolkovo” Moscow School of Management was an ambitious project.

The school is supposed to rival such famous business schools of those of Harvard and London.

Certainly business schools existed before in Russia, but the new one is supposed to be the first-ever Russian world center of business education.

“We noticed that in many industries, if not all, a lot of profit is going to come from emerging markets – Russia, India, China and others – which have very difficult and challenging environments and there is not really a school in the world addressing that,” said Wilfried Vanhonacker, the Skolkovo School of Management dean.

The school opened its doors today for the first batch of full-time MBA students and President Dmitry Medvedev came to congratulate the students.

He is also the chairman of the international supervisory board of the school.

In September 2006, members of the Russian business elite got together and decided that the country needed a brand new school of management – one that would prepare the new breed of Russian business leaders that would be able to deal with the realities of tomorrow.

They invested about $500 million into the Skolkovo project and into the completion of the brand new campus for it.

At the moment it is not quite complete and students will be taking their classes in some of the facilities in central Moscow, but it is expected that by spring the campus will be fully operational.