OREANDA-NEWS. March 30, 2012. Meeting in regular session, the Board of Directors of RUSNANO terminated the authority of a committee under its direction, the Committee on Investment Strategy, and created the Strategy Committee under the Board of Directors. The decision of the board included stipulations on the duties of the new consultative body.  The committee will be responsible for matters concerning strategic activities of RUSNANO and for the Regulations on Procedure and Conditions for Financing Investment Projects. It will review and prepare recommendations on proposed investment projects whose key parameters will go before the Board of Directors for approval or rejection.

The Board of Directors discussed progress in preparing the new Strategy of RUSNANO through 2015. It instructed management, in consultation with the Strategy Committee under the Board of Directors, to complete work on the document and to bring it before the board for its consideration in the third quarter of 2012.

During the meeting, members of the Board of Directors heard information on the closing of 13 investment projects whose cofinancing had been approved by the Supervisory Council of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies but whose investments had not been carried out.

Projects in this category had been expected to realize the following goals:

Expansion of a small-scale production base to large-scale production of equipment for deposition of modifying coatings of nanoscale thickness on materials and goods using magnetron discharge plasma and charged particle beams

Expansion of an existing production base for electrophotographic materials to include commercial production of toners, photoreceptors, and cartridges for laser printers, copying machines, and printing equipment using functional nanosized additives and photoconductive materials in nanodispersed form

Production of microsystem parts and equipment using acoustic and chemisorption nanoelectronics

Commercial production of infrared line and matrix photoreceptors based on nanostructured narrow-gap semiconductor materials for next generation optical-electronic apparatuses production of ABC plastics using nanoparticles, annual capacity of 80,000 tons

Production of processing units that are based on nanostructured catalyzers for removal of sulfur from associated gas

Production of nanostructured superconductors and related goods

Production of rhenium nanocrystals and soot and by-product metals recoverable from industrial raw materials

Production of LOKUS medical coverings with nanosized particles to treat burns and wounds

Establishment of a center for certifying nanotechnologies at a biomedical research center where preclinical studies could also be conducted

Production of nanodrugs and preparations for diagnosis and treatment of malignancies

Expansion and modernization of production of bicuspid mechanical heart valves and development and production of innovative tricuspid mechanical heart valves

Production of nanodrugs based on phospholipid transport.

Most frequently, these were the reasons for terminating projects:

Failure or refusal of the applicant or co-investor to assume certain responsibilities for carrying out the project

Refusal of the applicant to carry out the joint project, usually because of worsening financial position, irresolvable disagreement with RUSNANO over the financial obligations it would be required to assume, or withdrawal of the application.

Budgets for these projects would have totaled 17.9 billion rubles, which is 3.1 percent of the sum of all budgets of the projects RUSNANO has approved. As of March 13, 2012, the company had approved 145 projects with budgets totaling 568.6 billion rubles. RUSNANO’s share in the investment in those projects was 239.8 billion rubles.

Applicants for more than half of the projects RUSNANO has terminated report that they intend to pursue their plans using other sources of financing.

The Board of Directors approved a system for quarterly assessment of how effectively senior management is conducting its work during 2012. Evaluation includes corporate and functional indicators. The first group contains two indicators: the amount of money that is received by RUSNANO from project companies and project company earnings from the sale of nanotechnology goods and services. The selection of indicators in the second group varies with the sphere of the manager’s activity. Among them will be performance measured against indicators of spending reductions (introduced by the company in conformity with Order of the President of the Russian Federation № Pr-846 dated April 2, 2011).

RUSNANO’s Board of Directors approved a number of transactions with its subsidiary RUSNANO Israel Ltd. in which Yakov Urinson, deputy chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO and chairmen of the Supervisory Council of RUSNANO Israel Ltd., is a related party.

The Board of Directors gave its consent to combining executive responsibilities with other positions:

Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO, to serve concurrently as member of the Board of Directors of the company to be founded as part of realizing the investment project Domain: a strategic partnership with Domain Associates for investments in healthcare and infrastructure building to facilitate technology transfer to Russia 

Oleg Kiselev, deputy chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO, to serve concurrently as member of the Supervisory Board of the National University of Science and Technology and as member of the Board of Directors of Freight One.

The Board of Directors endorsed a proposal to the General Meeting of Shareholders of RUSNANO for a number of clarify changes to the charter of the company.

Finally, the Board of Directors took note of expenditures by the Rusnanotech Forum Fund for the nanotechnology development in 2011. That report was presented along with the auditor’s findings and the report from the Audit Committee.