THEY have gained unimaginable fortunes as leaders of Russia’s wild dash from communism to capitalism. Now the Russian oligarchs are investing more than $100 million (£53 million) to create a business school to teach the next generation of billionaires.

Plans for the Skolkovo school of management, in Moscow, were unveiled yesterday by 14 of the country’s wealthiest businessmen and companies with the aim of producing “top-flight business leaders for Russia”.

Organisers raised the prospect of Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea FC, offering master classes with fellow oligarchs on getting rich. Lectures forecast for the school include crisis communications, social responsibility and a study of Machiavelli’s famous doctrines on leadership.

Ruben Vardanian, the president of Skolkovo and chairman of Troika Dialog, the biggest investment bank in Russia, said that the partners had committed to take part in teaching as well as investing at least $5 million to build the school.

“People are not only giving their money but also their expertise and understanding of how they were able to succeed in volatile markets in a tough, competitive struggle,” he said.

Mr Vardanian, 38, whose company was founded 15 years ago and is worth an estimated $1.5 billion, said that the group aimed to raise a further $200 million for an endowment fund to support operations at the school.

He would be happy if Skolkovo was seen as a school for future oligarchs. It would create a “jazzy” image like that of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose students are often known as “millionaires in training” after its initials. The goal was to turn Skolkovo into one of the world’s top 20 business schools, with at least 25 per cent of international students, particularly from the rapidly developing economies of China, India and Brazil.

“We will not look at an applicant’s background and whether they are rich or poor. We will try to look into the soul and see whether he or she has leadership potential,” he said. Other backers of the school include Alexey Mordashov’s Severstal Group, which had an annual turnover of $11.7 billion last year, Leonid Mikhelson, the head of Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, and Alexander Abramov, the founder of the huge Evraz Group steel and mining business.

Mikhail Kusnirovich, whose company owns the famous GUM department store in Red Square, and TNK-BP, which is half-owned by BP, are also among the investors.

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