Russia's Skolkovo School of Management, due to open to full-time MBAs at the end of this year, is banking on a focus on the emerging economies that many hope will become drivers of growth to pull the world out of the slump.

“Our focus is on fast- moving economies – Russia, India, China . . . Our belief is that they will come out of the recession much faster than the established economies,” says Wilfried Vanhonacker, the school's international dean and a former dean and vice-president of the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

Skolkovo, on the outskirts of Moscow, cleared a hurdle late last year, taking a $245m line of credit from Sberbank, the Russian state-controlled bank. The school was granted the 10-year term credit in October, just after the global financial crisis took hold in Russia.