The Law firm “YUST”, jointly with the Russian Corporate Counsel Association (RCCA), held a discussion club session “M&A transactions in the Russian Federation: coordinating with the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the RF, Federal Financial Markets Servic

The session of the discussion club was chaired by Mr. R.S. Ibragimov, Vice-President of ОJSС “MTS.”

Among participants discussing actual problems of the coordination of M&A transactions were partners and lawyers of the Law firm “YUST”, specialists of legal departments of large Russian and international companies, as well as representatives of regulating state agencies.

The participants showed a great interest in the form chosen for holding the session. The vivacious discussion by leading experts – lawyers, representatives of governing institutions and business – ensured the diversified consideration of problems and marked prospects for perfecting the procedures of M&A transactions coordination.

Dmitry Seryogin, Head of Intellectual Property Division of the Law firm “YUST”, narrated on the requirements of antimonopoly bodies for participants effecting M&A transactions. Having described in detail the typical problems arising in the process of obtaining an approval from the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) for executing merger and acquisition transactions, the speaker specially emphasized the necessity to create a legal mechanism for receiving a preliminary opinion from the FAS in the process of coordinating M&A transactions, as well as the expediency to speed up the procedure of transactions approval in special cases where carrying out of serious researches is not required.

A report of Victoria Nazarova, Lawyer with the Law firm “YUST”, was dedicated to issues of coordinating M&A transactions with the Federal Financial Markets Service of Russia (FFMS). She focused the audience’s attention on key difficulties in the interaction between participants of the financial markets and the FFMS of Russia, and noted basic problems in the process of the performing by the state regulating agency of a control over acquisition of shares of an open joint-stock company.

The participants – lawyers and representatives of business - received answers to their topical questions from Mr. A.S. Ulyanov, Head of Division for Control and Supervision in Industry of the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service, Mr. Yu.S. Sizov, Head of the Regional Office of the FFMS of Russia in the Central Federal District, and Mr. D.M. Yan, Deputy Head of the Moscow Chief Territorial Department of the Bank of Russia.

The problems touched upon within the frames of the discussion club have displayed a wide variation of opinions on positive and negative aspects of the procedures of coordinating M&A transactions with the FAS, the FFMS, and the Central Bank of Russia.

In the final part of the session, the participants expressed a wish to get back later to discussion of the raised questions for understanding of the dynamics of their development.