Russian Silicon Valley Plans First IPO as Venture Capital Booms

The Kremlin’s innovation incubator plans to hold the first in a series of share sales by technology companies this year, buoyed by record venture capital investment in the country.

The first tenant of the Skolkovo Foundation technology park to go public will be VIST Mining, a software developer for metals companies that expects to raise $50 million selling stock in the next few months, Skolkovo Vice President Conor Lenihan said in an interview yesterday.

“This is a great blueprint for what Skolkovo can do,” said Lenihan, 49, a former science, technology & innovation minister of Ireland. It’s “within the pipeline of 500 startups, even though the park doesn’t officially open till next year.”

Viktor Vekselberg, Skolkovo’s billionaire president, hired Lenihan last year to help lure international companies to the 400-hectare (1,000-acre) campus in the Moscow suburb of the same name, southwest of the Russian capital. Former President Dmitry Medvedev started the project in 2010 as Russia’s attempt to duplicate the success of Silicon Valley, where companies such as Apple Inc. (AAPL) (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) have flourished. Skolkovo advisers include Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) (CSCO) CEO John Chambers, Siemens AG (SIE) CEO Peter Loescher, former Intel Corp. CEO Craig Barrett and three Nobel Prize winners, according to a report in Business Week.  >>More here

SOURCE:  businessweek.com

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