Maxima Legal held a seminar “Bankruptcy: New Rules and Old Problems” in conjunction with the “LAM” “Dostoyanie” Non-Commercial Partnership

The seminar was held in the conference room of the Indigo Hotel on 19 May. The moderator was Sergey Bakeshin, Senior Lawyer at Maxima Legal, and the special guest was Vladimir Miroshnichenko, chairman of the first team of judges at the Arbitration Court for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.

The seminar’s participants discussed changes in the law on bankruptcy for legal entities, as well as measures on the bankruptcy of private citizens that are yet to come into force.

The first speaker was Sergey Bakeshin, Head of Maxima Legal’s Corporate Law Department. He described the aims and consequences of the extensive changes in the rules on bankruptcy for legal entities and individual entrepreneurs adopted at the end of 2014. He said that among the main consequences were a reduction in the number of bankruptcy cases and simplified access to justice. He gave his assessment of the new legal measures aimed at providing protection from unscrupulous debtors, the changes relating to arbitration managers and the extension of the rights of mortgagors, as well as changes relating to the rules on the disputing of transactions by debtors.

In the opinion of the next speaker – Lyana Tlepsheva, Head of the Claims Department at the “Petrovsky” branch of the Khanty-Mansiysk Otkrytye Bank, the bankruptcy rules in the form adopted by the State Duma do not meet the interests of banks and other creditors. She was followed by Denis Kucherov, arbitration manager of “LAM” “Dostoyanie”, who remarked that the level of remuneration for financial managers acting in bankruptcy cases set in the legislation was extremely low and in no way commensurate with the volume of work and the level of responsibility. A lively discussion ensued on the consequences of non-observation of the requirement to notify creditors of the intention of a debtor or credit organization to file for bankruptcy. Vladimir Miroshnichenko, chairman of the first team of judges at the Arbitration Court for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, indicated that judges were currently refusing to accept applications filed without observing this requirement.

The seminar’s participants discussed a whole range of other problems arising from the application of the latest version of the bankruptcy law. Vladimir Miroshnichenko stressed: “an answer can be found to any question, but that answer will not always be correct”.