OREANDA-NEWS. Meeting in regular session, the Board of Directors of RUSNANO adopted a resolution on financing a project that will develop and produce wireless data transmission systems featuring 90/130 nm process technology or less. These systems are to be used in equipment for automated monitoring and accounting of energy resources.

Final parameters of RUSNANO’s participation in the new project will be disclosed after investment documents have been signed by all participants.

Members of the Board of Directors heard a report on actions taken by RUSNANO in response to a report from the Audit Chamber of the Russian Federation on the company’s audit.

The first criticism concerned the absence of RUSNANO’s new strategy. The Board of Directors of the company endorsed that document on July 11, 2013. Other comments are in various stages of address, with appropriate measures having been or being taken.

In relation to RUSNANO’s strategy for conversion to an investment fund, the company has set in place a significant complex of measures to reduce operating expenses and bring them in line with generally accepted practices worldwide for investment funds-roughly 2 percent of assets under management. To achieve that objective, the company has reduced staff from 450 employees to 270, thereby reducing salaries by 34 percent. It also decreased the square footage that its subsidiaries occupy and converted those premises to property under rental agreements. Steps to optimize facilities management-lower square footage with less expense for maintenance-have cut building expenses by half. Costs for vehicle maintenance were likewise cut by half. Thanks to these and other measures, expenses for the current year are expected to come in at 31 percent below operating expenses in 2010.

A number of remarks from the Audit Chamber’s report relate to the collection and analysis of information on intellectual property of RUSNANO’s portfolio companies. In gathering these data, the company has strived for a single information base for analysis and protection of technology. To that end, in late 2012, the company began developing a register of its intellectual property and that of its portfolio companies. The register of results of intellectual activities for which RUSNANO or its portfolio companies hold exclusive rights or rights to use contains descriptions of those results, their type, term, and territorial validity.

Members of the board heard a report on progress toward remediating deficiencies in realizing a number of projects presented to the Audit Chamber as well as measures undertaken to improve the effectiveness of investment activities in the company.

The Board of Directors reviewed progress in a project for lithium-ion battery production- portfolio company Liotech. Initially, the company had oriented itself toward producers of electric transport as primary consumers of its goods. The pace of growth in that market in Russia and in the global arena, however, was slower than anticipated. The portfolio company, with approval from its board, adjusted its strategy and changed its assortment of goods. Now the company will manufacture batteries and large-capacity energy storage systems designed mainly for large power-generating companies. The Board of Directors of RUSNANO approved a resolution to extend additional financing of 447 million rubles to the portfolio company.

Finally, the Board of Directors approved transactions in which members of the Executive Board are interested parties: a transaction involving an environmentally clean and energy saving solid-state lighting project using nanotechnology in its manufacturing and a transaction for portfolio company Bind, which is developing, and will bring to the global market, medications based on a new generation nanoplatform. Executive Board members Oleg Kiselev and Yuri Udaltsov are engaged, respectively, in those projects.