OREANDA-NEWS. December 08, 2014. CEO and Chairman of the Board Herman Gref took part in the Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov’s business breakfast together with representatives of investment, construction and transport companies.

The topic of the event was “new opportunities to initiate investment projects and development transport infrastructure with private business”. The business breakfast opened the VII International Forum “Transport of Russia”, which took place in Moscow.

In his presentation Herman Gref quoted Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor and Chair of Major Programme Management at Oxford, and author of the bestseller Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition – “The most difficult aspect of mega projects is not even the high cost, technological difficulties, or large number of interested parties, but the extensive preparations and long period of implementing such projects. As the length of the project increases, so does the number of unforeseen events, including so called ‘black swans’ (a term coined by Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan, which refers to rare and unpredictable events that have a significant impact on projects).

“A key problem in implementing long-term infrastructure projects is an underdeveloped culture of project management,” according to Herman Gref. “We need to develop a strategy for attracting private investments for investment projects,” the CEO pointed out. “Moreover we need a radical paradigm shift associated with the protection of investor rights for these projects.”

In May 2014 Sberbank and the Ministry of Transport of Russia signed an agreement on strategic cooperation and general principles for organizing financing for investment projects.