On May 30, 2015, V St. Petersburg International Legal Forum has concluded its work showing the record number of delegates, exceeding 3 000 participants. The anniversary forum agenda included actual topics addressing the interests of the business and legal community.
Thus, recent amendment of the civil legislation was one of the key topics of the Forum. On 29th of May being part of the business schedule the roundtable discussion «Acting Novels of the Civil Code for Legal Entitites» took place, with Maxim Bunyakin, Managing Partner of Branan Legal, being one of the speakers.
Andrey Egorov, First Deputy Chairman of the Board, Alexeev Private Law Research Centre under the President of the Russian Federation, acted as the moderator of the discussion. The speakers included Vadim Chubarov, Vice President, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, Аlexandra Makovskaya, Head of the Department of Legislation on Legal Entities, Alexeev Private Law Research Centre under the President of the Russian Federation, Aleхandr Kuznetsov, Deputy Head of Division of the Financial and Securities Legislation, Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, and other leading experts in the corporate law, inclusive of representatives of the state authorities, business and legal community.
Participants of the roundtable discussed the issues related to the responsibility of the controllers, discretionary nature of regulation of non-profit organizations, ensuring balance of interests of minority stakeholders and contracting parties when entering major and related-party transactions and other pertinent issues.
Maxim Bunyakin spoke of key problems of implementation of new provisions of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and on work in progress aimed to bring into conformity the provisions of the legislation (Federal laws “On Joint Stock Companies”, “On Limited Liability Companies”, “On State Registration of the Legal Entities”) with the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. In particular, subject to discussion were the new forms of reorganization, including the combined reorganization, tightening of the mother company liability for the transactions undertaken by its subsidiary, multiple directors institution.
New schemes of reorganization now accessible to any legal entity came out to be of particular interest and subject to practical queries addressed by the audience. For example, now the Civil Code of the Russian Federation allows to combine several forms of reorganization (such possibility being prior granted only to joint-stock companies and non-government pension funds) and for different types of companies to participate in reorganization. The outlined enables business to substantially conserve financial and time resources. However, a range of new reorganization schemes will be possible for implementation only after respective amendments are introduced in the regulatory framework.
Records of the anniversary Forum programme are available on the official site of the Forum.
Award ceremony of the annual competition “Best Legal Departments of Russia — 2015” became one of the most exciting events of the additional programme of the anniversary Forum. The celebrating was attended by heads of legal departments of more than 80 companies – nominees of the competition (17 nominations), by partners of the event and members of the Expert council. As part of the competition new nomination “Innovation and venture companies” was introduced (is was the initiative of the Expert council member, Maxim Bunyakin). Despite its novelty the said nomination had huge success with the participants. The nominees were: Internet initiatives development fund, Center of Intellectual Property «Skolkovo», Rosnano Management Company», Fund «Energy without borders», Fund of infrastructure and educational programmes. The winner was Rosnano Management Company