On 7 July at a restaurant in central St Petersburg called Arka a business breakfast titled ‘Digital marketing: new tools for promoting real estate’ took place as part of a set of business meetings arranged by business club Meeting!, for which Maxima Legal is the legal partner.

Owners of businesses in the real estate sector, heads of advertising agencies, managers of departments for sale and marketing from construction companies and IT professionals discussed current communication technologies and marketing tools in the sphere of construction and development.

Senior Associate and specialist for the firm’s IP/IT practice, Maxima Ali, talked with the participants about the need to agree terms before purchasing IT solutions for the promotion and sale of real estate.  Maxim also gave examples of the more common legal pitfalls when purchasing IT products and explained how these can be avoided.

On 8 July, Delovoy Peterburg published an article which examines the situation between the tenants and the landlord of a commercial centre in St Petersburg called Monpansye.  The article is about how the dispute concerning Monpansye, which is a 58,500 square metres property, in the arbitration court of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region flared up.

Head of the practice for real estate and construction at Maxima Legal, Konstantin Boytsov, is representing the interests of a tenant, a gallery of Russian designers called ‘Luglook’, who the landlord is threatening with fines and doubling rental payments along with a threat of blocking access to the building.

Konstantin assessed the current situation as a flagrant breach of the law, ‘eviction of a tenant can only take place on the basis of a court decision, the actions of blocking access of a tenant, whose lease is registered with Rosreestre [the Russian equivalent of a Land Registry], is against legislation.’

He considers that the owner of the commercial centre used the procedure of restructuring in order to try to avoid the obligations of the previous owner.

To read the article (in Russian), please see the following website: dp.ru.

On 3 June, a roundtable event organised by Maxima Legal, along with the business group ‘Leaders Club’ and supported by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives in the North-western federal region, took place as a fringe event of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.   The event was at the Crowne Plaza hotel and was titled ‘The prospects for development of public-private partnerships in the regions of Russia’.

The aim of the roundtable event was to create a platform for dialogue about public-private partnership projects, which could increase attractiveness of investing in the regions and the country as a whole.  Particular attention was given to the best practices in preparing projects in the regions as well as the problems which are encountered with public and private partnerships during their development and implementing of PPP projects and their potential solutions.

The roundtable event brought together government departments, corporations involved in development and the agencies for investment from St Petersburg, Kamchatka, the Republic of Udmurtia, and Kemerovo, Sverdlovsk, Leningrad and Moscow regions.

Maxim Avrashkov, Managing Partner at Maxima Legal, opened the discussion and introduced the deputy chairman of the Committee for Investment in St Petersburg, Dmitry Sinkin, co-ordinator of the Leaders Club in St Petersburg and Leningrad region, Vyacheslav Traktovenko, and also the director of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives in the north-western federal region, Arzum Arzumanyan.

The speakers commented that public-private partnerships is one of the areas of priority for developing the economy of the country as a whole, which had been discussed during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Vladimir Kilinkarov, Head of the PPP Practice at Maxima Legal, moderated the discussion and drew attention to the problems which regions encounter when implementing PPP projects, with focus on participants in the roundtable exchanging experiences.  In the discussions about problems and challenges in PPP, Ilya Ivanov, the founder of the Medical Investment Group, and Daria Godunova, Managing Partner of the PPP Pioneers, contributed.

The deputy chairman of the Committee for Investment in St Petersburg, Dmitry Sinkin, talked about the city’s plans for development over the next 15 years with more than 15 agreements with PPP which will involve all types of industries, including transport, medicine, sport, tourism, culture and recreation.

The representatives of the regions shared their problems and interesting cases and exchanged experience about preparing and implementing PPP projects in their cities and regions.

Dmitry Sinkin and Vyacheslav Traktovenko commented on the necessity for PPP to move into the digital age and to create a single platform which can provide a link between government requests and business investments opportunities with the needs of people.

At the end of the roundtable, Vladimir Kilinkarov and Maxim Avrashkov thanked all the participants in the discussion for their insightful contributions and time given, and also proposed to continue discussion next year during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2018.

Additional information:

During the Economic Forum, the regional administrations of St Petersburg and Leningrad region signed a number of agreements for large PPP projects, which included:

-          An agreement for the construction of the Eastern High-speed Radius (EHR), a new motorway stretching 16.8 kilometres which will link existing motorways in the city. The first agreement for the construction of the new motorway was entered into between the city and PAO Bank VTB; the size of the investment to be made by the bank is not less than 110 billion roubles.

-          The second agreement for the construction of the EHR was signed with the Eurasian Development Bank (EABR), the bank stated its intention to invest not less than 150 billion roubles in the project.

-          OOO Sankt-Peterburgskaya Platnaya Doroga signed an agreement with the city for the construction on a toll road between the railway crossings along the high-speed train routes of Sapsan and Allegro which link St Petersburg with Moscow and Helsinki respectively. The expected sized of this investment is 8 billion roubles.

-          Eurasian Development Bank signed an agreement on the construction in St Petersburg of motorway M-49 and Suzdalsky prospekt.  The investor is prepared to invest in the roads’ construction 14 billion roubles, the project is due to be be completed by 2027. According to the plan, motorway M-49 with link Primorskoye highway and an existing toll road and be a distance of nine kilometres.

-          GK Etalon will carry out the construction of social infrastructure as part of its flagship project ‘Galaktika’. The investor will build two schools at a cost of around three billion roubles, and the city over a number of years will return the investments through instalments.

-          PAO Rostelekom signed an agreement with the city with the intention of creating an intelligent system for monitoring the city’s roads which will become part of a wider project called ‘Intelligent city’.  The project is planned to be completed by 2022 with an investment of four billion roubles.

-          Another similar agreement was concluded with OOO Bayterg for the creation of a monitoring system for roads and traffic management. This system involves the installation in St Petersburg of more than a thousand cameras which will provide comprehensive traffic control. The project should be completed by 2019 with an anticipated investment of 6.5 billion roubles.

-          LLC Medical Investment Group signed an agreement with the Leningrad region for the modernising of the outpatient network in the region. The programme includes the construction of two clinics (in Murino and Kudrovo) and ten outpatient clinics. The total investment is 1.5 billion roubles.

Maxima Legal’s took fourth place in the list of largest legal tenders for May 2017 prepared by Pravo.ru, after it won a tender to represent PAO MRSK Severo-Zapada in the Supreme Court until May 2018.

PAO MRSK Severo-Zapada is one of the leading electricity network companies in the North-western Federal district of Russia.  The company provides electricity in Karelia and Komi, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Murmansk, Novgorod and Pskov regions.  The majority shareholder of the company is Rosseti, a major electricity supplier in Russia.

For the full article on Pravo.ru about the largest legal tenders in May 2017, please click here.

For information about how Maxima Legal is representing PAO MRSK Severo-Zapada in the Supreme Court, please click here.

The Managing Partner of Maxima Legal, Maxim Avrashkov, and the Head of the Tax department, Elena Kilinkarova, who regularly take part in the St Petersburg International Legal Forum, have shared their impressions about the business and cultural programme of the Forum which took place from 15 to 20 May in the General Staff building of the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

Maxim and Elena noted that the strong business programme included a large number of fringe events, also that there was an international makeup to the delegates and experiments with new event formats, notably a mock tax dispute which involved representatives from the Federal Tax Service and judges from the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation.

The cultural programme of the Forum was also varied and rich: from a concert of the world-famous chamber ensemble of Moscow Soloists who were conducted by Yury Bashmet at the St Petersburg Philharmonia (whose legal partners are Maxima Legal) to parties on Rubenstein street as part of Legal Street. Delegates of the Forum were also able to take part in a charity run called Legal Run (for information about Maxima Legal’s participation in the run, read here) and to take part in a regatta.  The format of the Forum provided for productive discussions and exchanges of experience, both from professional and social perspectives.

According to Maxim and Elena, the Forum is one of the best events in Russia where lawyers can discuss current matters and questions and at the same time socialise.

For further information about the Forum, please see the following link.