Russian reformer Chubais to head Rosnanotech -paper

MOSCOW, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Anatoly Chubais, one of Russia's main supporters of market-friendly reforms and former chief of now-defunct power monopoly RAO UES, will head up the state-owned Rosnanotech, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Thursday.

The business daily said Chubais would take up the post of chief executive from September and would play an active role, according to a source close to the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's administration.

But it noted that the decision has not yet been finalised, and last-minute negotiations were going on in the Kremlin.

Rosnanotech, also known as Nanotechnology Corporation, is one of several organisations created last year to jump-start investment in infrastructure and non-energy sectors.

Vedomosti said it was the challenge of transforming the economy from a resource focus to an innovation focus that had attracted Chubais to the job.

His old firm UES was formed in the early 1990s as a stopgap between the Soviet command system and privatisation. With its assets sold or spun off, and a liberalised domestic power market in the works, it ceased to exist earlier this year. (Reporting by Toni Vorobyova, editing by Will Waterman)