Given that domestic litigators in Russia and the CIS regularly see their clients’ largest commercial disputes go abroad, usually to be resolved under English law, they treat the outflow of work with unexpectedly good grace. This is mostly based on the realisation that this exodus of high-value litigation not only reflects what clients want, but also what they need. But what’s best for clients isn’t always best for advisers’ bottom lines.

‘The tendency for cases to go to the UK High Court will remain for the next two or three years,’ says Markian Malskyy, head of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) at Ukrainian law firm Arzinger. ‘Normally the bigger Ukrainian law firms would try to exclude the domestic courts from any potential disputes. One party will usually hope that the UK courts will accept jurisdiction. This looks like a good platform for objective justice – still hard to find in the CIS.’ Continue reading “A question of confidence – Russians strive to keep high stakes disputes at home”

Boris Berezovsky v Roman Abramovich; Michael Cherney v Oleg Deripaska – these were the two headlining title bouts that for a brief and glorious moment took the often prosaic world of shareholder disputes out of the business sections and on to the front page of almost every national newspaper.

They involved a cast of colourful litigants with a seemingly bottomless pit of money and grudges, whose lawyers, particularly the barristers, were turned into media stars, if only for a while. The costs were huge and the outcomes of both cases well documented. Continue reading “After the gold rush – has the age of the oligarch dispute passed?”