Kremlin-drafted legislation aimed against Russian-style corporate raiders — unscrupulous businesspeople who seize property through dubious registrations and share emissions — will come up for a first reading in the State Duma. But the legislation, which introduces harsh penalties for raiders, might also backfire and hurt rightful shareholders because of deep-rooted corruption, legal experts said.
State Duma deputies have introduced a bill that would fight circular ownership structures by depriving a company's subsidiaries of voting rights and dividends from owning shares in the parent firm, although experts said the proposals went too far. The amendments limiting the use of cross holdings were submitted by four Duma committee chairmen from United Russia. When subsidiaries buy the parent company's shares, managers are able to control the firm to shareholders' detriment and the company becomes less transparent, the deputies wrote in explanatory notes to the bill. There are also risks of conflicts of interests, Viktor Pleskachevsky, a co-author of the bill and chairman of the Property Committee said.
Despite challenging economic and political conditions, Moscow law firms said they have not only stuck to their investment plans during the crisis but also intend to expand further in the near future.
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service on Monday accused several Russian and foreign companies of flouting the law for investing in strategic industries and said it would retaliate in court for the first time since the rules took effect almost two years ago.
Immediately after Gazprom bought out international companies' stakes in Sakhalin-2, the state received a privileged share in Sakhalin Energy, which paid a $1.35 billion dividend.
The Constitutional Court has decided that the Supreme Arbitration Court has the right to set legal guidelines, not just follow the law — a move that lawyers say is the first step toward a precedent-based system of law.
OAO Severstal billionaire Alexei Mordashov’s ex-wife is seeking $500 million at the European Court of Human Rights because a judge in the steelmaker’s hometown ordered her to pay $7.2 million for challenging their divorce agreement.
Bankers say a failure to complete restructurings may hamper Russia's ability to borrow in the future and the absence of clearly defined negotiation guidelines between Russian and western lenders raises the risk of future defaults. Currency and commodity markets have been unexpectedly benign for Russia since June, helping to stave off a widely forecast debt disaster, but Dubai World's debt woes have served as a reminder that the problem has merely been postponed.
Legal Week's Independent Law Firms in Europe supplement publishes Dmitry Afanasiev’s commentary on Russian legal market.
Russia withdrew a $22.7 billion lawsuit against Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Thursday, agreeing to a $14 million settlement and ending a case that critics said had threatened to further tarnish the already battered reputation of its judicial system.
Russian and CIS markets couldn’t escape the painful consequences of the global downturn. Legal Business looks at how domestic and international law firms are redrawing the market and what a series of law reforms will mean for investors.
The Lawyer 31 August 2009 publishes the work-life quiz with Ilya Nikiforov, Managing partner of EPAM.
The Ministry of Economic Development introduced another insolvency/bankruptcy bill, which is expected to bring a significant change in the company arrangements procedure for companies and for the first time in Russian legislative history to allow bankruptcy proceedings against groups of companies, including those with international structures.
President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday ordered Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and the head of the Kremlin’s oversight department, Konstantin Chuichenko, to open an investigation into state corporations, in a sign of growing skepticism over the institutions’ role in the economy.
In June 2009 amendments to the federal law on bankruptcy drafted by the Ministry for Economic Development came into effect. Evgeny Raschevsky, a partner with EPAM, comments on the amendments for Russia Today TV emphasizing that their purpose is to improve procedures to restore solvency of debtors and their financial rehabilitation.