Attorneys from ART DE LEX participated in the Seventh Annual IBA Conference “Mergers and Acquisitions in Russia and the CIS”
On 12 November, the Seventh Annual Conference of the International Bar Association (IBA), titled “Mergers and acquisitions in Russia and the CIS,” took place in Moscow. Practitioners and jurists, from leading foreign and domestic law firms, were at the conference, along with heads of legal departments for businesses and academics. The main topic of the meeting focused on mergers and acquisitions, taking into account the current changes in civil and corporate law.
The agenda included the most urgent issues currently associated with transactions in mergers and acquisitions:
• Macroeconomic trends in mergers and acquisitions
• The reform of civil legislation: new rules for M&A transactions
• International mergers and acquisitions: the myths, realities, and execution
• Transactions with distressed assets in the Russian market
• Disputes involving mergers and acquisitions
At the conference, two representatives of the ART DE LEX law firm delivered reports: Yaroslav Kulik, a partner with the firm, and Artur Zurabyan, the head of the Dispute Resolution and Mediation Practice.
Yaroslav Kulik spoke about the tendencies of control over foreign investments in strategic areas, highlighting, in particular, the failed amendments to the Federal Law on Foreign Investment in the spring of 2015. These amendments, the idea of FAS Russia, aimed at empowering the president and the chairman of the government’s Commission on Monitoring Foreign Investment to decide on the need to harmonize individual transactions through order 57-FL, which blurred the boundaries of statutory limitations. The expert community managed to convince those who drafted the legislation to modify it. Yaroslav Kulik also said that, with the adoption of the fourth antimonopoly package, beginning in 2016, there will be a need, in certain cases, to obtain the consent of the Federal Antimonopoly Service for implementing joint activities, although the law liberalized the overall control over economic concentration.
Arthur Zurabyan spoke at the “Dispute resolution” session, where he reported about the removal of the “corporate veil.” In his speech, Zurabyan focused on the concepts and approaches of the Russian courts to the application of the law, based on specific cases. See the link above for Zurabyan’s complete presentation.
Peter B. Maggs, professor of law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, presented his research about the efforts of English courts to remove the “corporate veil.” On the Russian side, Anton Kaziev, the head of the financial institutions of the Ingosstrakh insurance company, provided the participants with up-to-date information regarding liability insurance for members of individual or collective management bodies of Russian companies. Finally, Dmitry Timofeev, the director of legal affairs for UK Rosvodokanal, reported about civil law reforms that permit two CEOs within a company.
