OREANDA-NEWS. October 2, 2012. Vnesheconombank participated in the first General Assembly and Board of Directors meeting of the Montreal Group held in the city of Montreal (Canada) on September 27-28, 2012.

In the course of the meeting its participants approved the Group’s basic documents: its Charter and Membership Agreement, they also approved the Group’s Board of Directors composed of five members. Board Member – Deputy Chairman of Vnesheconombank Mikhail Kopeikin represents interests of the Russian side.

As part of the Assembly at a round table discussion Vnesheconombank’s representatives discussed issues of funding intangible assets, guarantee support instruments and determining performance indicators of micro-, and medium-sized enterprises. “Taking into account best practices of leading foreign development banks we plan to expand instruments for supporting SMEs”, said Mikhail Kopeikin.

Development institutions incorporated in the Montreal Group agreed to create an online storage for exchanging information on their experience in assisting micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Montreal Group was officially founded on September 19, 2012 for encouraging sharing of ideas and practices to provide support for micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises to accomplish their business tasks. A Memorandum of Understanding on Establishing the Montreal Group was signed in September of 2012 and it united seven founders: BDC (Canada), BNDES (Brazil), the China Development Bank, NAFINSA (Mexico), OSEO (France), SIDBI (India) and Vnesheconombank (Russia).