Following the preliminary joint venture agreement signed last year, the Computer Systems Research and Industrial Amalgamation in Kazan, Russia and UK-based ICL Plc have registered their joint venture. Called ICL-KPO VS, the Kazan-based Tatarstan-UK company has an authorised capital of $8m. It was officially set up on January 28. The attracting government is investing $50m, earned from oil exports in the first three years of the project. The joint venture will localise, manufacture, sell, and service ICL Unix-based servers with a full range of software and development tools. A spokesman for the new venture says it aims to sell into the health care, transport, local government, banking markets. Despite success in Poland, Czechoslovakia, ICL has not been overly successful in Russia.
