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.
...In addition to dropping its vague language, the amended law would cover cartel collusion, which it currently does not, said Grigory Chernyshov, a partner at law firm EPAM...
Mergers & Acquisitions 2009 in 58 jurisdictions worldwide publishes survey of the Russian M&A market by Elena Sokolova and Vladislav Arkhipov
Tucked among the financial data supplied by law firms this year were annual profits and profit margins. On the basis of these figures, TopLegal International was able to calculate the profits per equity partner (PEP) of 20 legal houses.
By most accounts, Russian law firms remain an unknown force. Much of this has to do with the Russian legal market which has been less transparent compared with other European regions. Yet EPAM has done much to sweep aside the air of mystery that surrounds native Moscow practices. And it has done so to truly surprising effect.