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Russian, Italian investment funds create investment platform worth 1 bln euro

TRIESTE, November 26, 23:37 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Direct Investment Fund and Italy’s Fondo Strategico Italiano have signed a memorandum on creating a Russian-Italian investment platform to finance projects in Russia and Italy. The signing ceremony was held on Tuesday in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

The funds to be managed by the partners will reach one billion euro, with each of the parties, Russia’s Direct Investment Fund and Fondo Strategico Italiano investing 500 million euro in companies and projects geared towards strengthening foreign trade and increasing direct investments between Italy and Russia.

Speaking to journalists after the Russian-Italian interstate consultations, the Russian president said that the two countries “have a possibility to work in the area of agriculture, in the area of transport machine-building, in the area of ship-building, both civilian and defence, which testifies to a high degree of trust.” “As concerns civilian products, they include specialized machinery to work on the sea shelf, machinery for our big companies,” Putin noted. “And finally, we can work in space - not long ago, Italy’s first cosmonaut made a spacewalk. It is also joint work. In general, we have very many interesting and promising areas of cooperation.”

The Italian prime minister, in turn, noted that these issues, along with such subjects as farming, culture and tourism had been raised at the talks. “We do pin hopes on this fund worth one billion euro,” Letta said. “We believe it will give the guarantees needed for our companies to work together in the interests of creating jobs, because we must overcome the crisis. It can be overcome only if our companies can use the possibilities that are especially interesting in Russia.”

“The Russian-Italian investment platform will make it possible to considerably intensify investment and trade cooperation between Russia and Italy,” said Kirill Dmitriyev, director general of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. “Currently, as many as 500 companies with Italian capital are operating in Russia, of which 70 have production facilities inside the country.”

The Russian Direct Investment Fund was set up in June 2011 to make investments in the authorized capital in Russia jointly with leading foreign financial and strategic investors. The Fund’s managing company is headquartered in Moscow and is a 100 percent subsidiary of Vensheconombank.

Fondo Strategico Italiano (FSI) is a holding company. Its controlling shareholder is Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA. FSI invests in companies, which plan to expand their businesses, improve operational efficiency and consolidate positions on the domestic and foreign markets. The fund is a long-term minority investor and takes part in the management of companies it invests to.

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