Rusnano still plans to sell 10 percent of shares to investors in 2012 and expects the proceeds to be reinvested in the company, chief executive Anatoly Chubais said in an interview with Interfax.

"I had a very detailed conversation on this topic with the prime minister. His position, as I understand it, is this: For the government, Rusnano is not an instrument for bolstering the budget, but an instrument for creating a nanotech industry," Chubais said.

Rusnano held a tender and selected a consortium of Merrill Lynch and VTB Capital to arrange the sale, Chubais said in the interview published Wednesday.

"One [bank] is responsible for the world and the other for Russia," Chubais said.

"The 10 percent of shares that we plan to place this year does not seem like much. But this is a jump into waters that we have not swum in before," he added.

As of October 1, 2011, Rusnano had approved financing for 128 projects with a combined budget of 501 billion rubles ($16.6 billion), of which its share was 213 billion rubles, Interfax reported.