"I hope common sense and justice will prevail."

Managing Partner of Duvernoix Legal shared his expert opinion with Business Guide (BG) “Kommersant” on the results of the year, the risks of bringing beneficiaries to subsidiary liability and factors affecting the legal profession in Russia:

BUSINESS GUIDE: Egor Aleksandrovich, what were your expectations for 2021 based on the trends outlined in 2020? Were they justified and, if so, in what way?

EGOR NOSKOV: I think that no one in the legal market had inflated expectations for 2021. We are the least affected by the coronavirus, because the amount of legal work is not decreasing: transactions are being made, courts are working, conflicts continue. The legal industry did not break records last year – neither in Russia nor abroad, but lawyers can't complain. It is clear that when the economy is not thriving, there is less of such work, but it is enough to feed ourselves, and the year ended quite favorably for our company.

BG: Have there been any high-profile cases in the practice of Duvernoix Legal lawyers during the year?

E. N.: This year we have really achieved great success, especially in litigation practice. We ended the year winning two major cases that we conducted within the framework of two large corporate conflicts.

One is a dispute between a group of minor shareholders of “Kirovsky Zavod” with its management and the company itself, the reason for which was a number of shares transactions made in 2005-2008. The dispute continued since 2008, was under consideration by the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation (SAC) in 2012 and radically changed the approach of courts to the consideration of disputes on corporate losses, including formed the basis of the resolution of the Plenum of the SAC of the Russian Federation dated July 30, 2013 No. 62 "On certain issues of compensation for damages by persons who are members of a legal entity’s bodies." This is the most cited corporate dispute in Russia, in all practice, and we are proud to have represented it. This is an official fact, the case has really completely changed the litigation practice of the whole country. The Supreme Arbitration Court actually instructed to consider a whole category of such cases in a different way, so the “Kirovsky Zavod” case had the largest number of references, despite the fact that we have no case law in Russia.