Moscow, February 1, 2012. –The Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO and MasterCard announce the contest “Discovering opportunities with MasterCard”, three winners of which will be praised with grants in the amount of 40 thousand euro for education on the SKOLKOVO MBA programme.

SKOLKOVO MBA is a 12-month educational programme developed for young business-leaders who would be able to introduce new, extravagant, dynamic projects in the entrepreneurial sphere. The cost of education on the programme is 60 thousand euro.

“The cooperation between MasterCard and the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO have already been proceeding for several years. The President of MasterCard is a member of the International Advisory Board of the school and actively takes part in its work. We totally understand that development and strengthening of the country’s managerial potential is an extremely important task; our support of talented leaders of the future is aimed at the achievement of that goal”, said Ilya Ryabiy, Head of MasterCard Russia.

“The SKOLKOVO MBA programme started in autumn 2009. If we take statistics into account – more than a half of the school’s graduates are engaged in their own entrepreneurial projects, and the others are working on top positions in different state and private organizations, - comments Lawrence Wright, SKOLKOVO start-up project director. We expect that exactly the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO graduates will form the economic landscape of Russia in the nearest decades”.

Anybody can take part in the contest. In order to do this a candidate has to fill in the application form for the SKOLKOVO MBA programme and to provide his or her business-project in the form of an essay and a video-presentation. An essay is expected to be not more than 7 000 characters, and a video-presentation - no longer than 2-3 minutes.

Projects should meet the following requirements: a problem draft, clearly stated solutions, a strategy, a detailed plan of the strategy implementation, an analysis of the competitive environment and core challenges on the way to the project implementation.

Projects sent to the contest will be assessed by MasterCard and SKOLKOVO representatives as well as by visiting experts. The contest committee comprises Ilya Ryabiy, CEO of MasterCard Russia; Alexey Malinovsky, director of cooperation with governmental bodies of MasterCard; Andrei Volkov, Dean of SKOLKOVO; Lawrence Wright, SKOLKOVO start-up project director; Stefan Dertnig, SKOLKOVO project director; Olga Reiman, President of the charity fund “Kto, esli ne ya” (Who, if not me); Alexandra Dronova, SKOLKOVO graduate, deputy director of the Department of international law and cooperation of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.

The contest “Discovering opportunities with MasterCard” will be held in several stages: selection of semi-finalists based on application forms and essays, examinations and tests for the SKOLKOVO MBA programme and identification of finalists, and the final itself.  The contest results and the names of three winners will be announced on April 26.

The contest details and deadlines can be found at http://www.skolkovo.ru/public/ru/mastercard/

MasterCard (NYSE: MA) is a global payments and technology company.  It operates the world’s fastest payments processing network, connecting consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. MasterCard’s products and solutions make everyday commerce activities—such as shopping, traveling, running a business and managing finances—easier, more secure and more efficient for everyone. Learn more at mastercard.com or follow us on Twitter @mastercardnews or join the conversation on The Heart of Commerce Blog