On 26 September 2017, Managing Partner at Maxima Legal, Maxim Avrashkov, took part in the presentation of the annual project 'Ranking of millionaires. The wealthiest people in St Petersburg' published by Delovoy Peterburg and the new project Delovoy Club DP.

The presentation of the ranking, which was supported by Maxima Legal, took place at a closed event with an exhibition of art titled 'Legacy of millionaires. The private collections of modern Russia' held at the Leningrad Centre. As part of the event, art from private collections of St Petersburg millionaires was displayed, including paintings, retro-memorabilia, valuable books and other art objects. Businesspeople discussed investment in art whilst art historians discussed the value of the presented collections.

The ranking published by Delovoy Peterburg traditionally includes businesspeople who are considered locals, regardless of their place of birth, current place of residence or where their assets are primarily located. The wealth of the millionaires was evaluated on the basis of the value of companies owned by them, ongoing projects, property as well as any property under construction.

In the 2017 ranking, 304 successful entrepreneurs were included. For further information (in Russian) please click on the following link.

From 20 to 22 September 2017 in the congressional exhibition centre at the Expoforum the 10th St Petersburg International Innovation Forum took place. At the event as part of the business programme, Senior Associate at Maxima Legal and specialist in intellectual property and information technology law, Maxim Ali, took part.

As part of the conference on Life Sciences on 20 September, Maxim talked about the legal packaging of an innovative product and preparation for its sale to an investor. Maxim identified several problems that developers may face resulting from the informal relations between the project participants, the lack of a strategy for protecting rights in Russia and abroad, the lack of respect for the rights of the authors as well as a lack of understanding of the legal risks when working with consumers.

On 21 September, Maxim gave a presentation as the legal expert to a session on 'Technology Transfer Day: Technology for mega cities 2017', the organiser of which was the business incubator Ingriya with the support of the Committee for Industrial Policy and Innovation in St Petersburg.

Technological innovators presented five start-ups: Innokor, DAAF, Mufti NSK, Svepkhchetaya Voda Ultra and 4BLIND.

The event was a space for presentations for projects to experts, representatives of big businesses, investment funds and investors as well as an opportunity to search for partners to develop projects and to strengthen connections with developers of projects ready for investment and to be transferred.

Business newspaper, Delovoy Peterburg has published the results of its third large-scale study titled 'The Map of the Legal Market in St Petersburg', which compares 56 law firms including the regional offices of national and international law firms.

The criteria used in the study to determine the scale of activities of St Petersburg-based firms was their income for 2016, income for each practice area (divided into 13 practices) and by each client type (divided into 19 industries). Further to this, Delovoy Peterburg considered the results of leading international rating agencies: Chambers & Partners, Best Lawyers, Legal500 and IFLR1000 as well as the results of its regional ranking 'Lawyer of the Season', which were also included in the special edition.

For further information (in Russian), please see the following website.

On 20 September 2017, the first regional conference 'White Collar Crime 2017. Protecting businesses from criminal prosecutions' took place, organised by business newspaper Delovoy Peterburg. Senior Associate from Maxima Legal and Head of the Dispute Resolution Practice, Sergey Bakeshin, took part in the event.

Speakers at the conference included representatives from the Investigative Committee in St Petersburg, City Prosecutors, the Ministry for Home Affairs in St Petersburg and Leningrad region, the City Administration and leading representatives from the legal services market.

The programme for the conference covered various aspects of the interaction between Russian businesses and the criminal justice system. Participants considered the effectiveness of the application of criminal prosecutions to influence corporate disputes, the prosecution of taxpayers and involvement in foreign economic activities, credit institutions and financial markets. A separate part of the discussion was on the topic of the regulatory compliance of businesses.

For a detailed programme of the conference (in Russian) click here.