A Top-Level Dispute The dispute between shareholder Alexei Navalny and Rosneft has become the subject of review by two of the country’s highest courts at once — the Supreme Arbitration Court (VAS) and the Constitutional Court (KS). The courts will receive guidance on how to handle disputes between companies and minority shareholders over access to information. Yesterday, the VAS website published a draft information letter, “On Certain Issues in the Practice of Arbitration Courts’ Review of Disputes on Providing Information to Participants in Business Companies.” Read in full
I’m starting to think that the minutes of Rosneft’s Board of Directors contain information about how many children the company’s management has eaten. What else could they be hiding so desperately? Nothing but eaten children... Well, maybe traces of some other charming little pranks too — like stealing a couple of billion. Nothing special. You can view the draft information letter from the Supreme Arbitration Court here. If it is adopted in this form, I’ll be very pleasantly surprised. The VAS is planning to seriously limit the ability of “Effective Managers” to string shareholders along and deny them information under various pretexts. That letter alone would justify the time and effort my colleagues and I have spent battling our endless, all-powerful, gigantic TransRosNeftGazMetalSnabVneshTorgSurgutSberGeologoCorporation. Update: Kommersant writes about the same issue, but interprets the letter somewhat differently.