We are pleased to introduce our new colleague, a qualified solicitor of English and Wales, Robert Houchill. Robert will head a new area of immigration services provided by our firm’s Private Wealth department. In addition, Robert will assist clients with various matters concerning English and International law, including commercial, contract and corporate law.

Robert completed a law degree at Essex University before completing the Legal Practice Course at the College of Law in Bloomsbury, London. Before moving to St Petersburg in September 2015, Robert worked at a number of law firms in London for five years, including at leading Legal 500-ranked firms Gherson and Bates Wells Braithwaite.

Maxima Legal’s Private Wealth department has signed an agreement to work together with one of Russia’s leading private banks, Bank VTB-24. Together with Bank VTB-24, we aim to develop a long and mutually beneficial relationship.

Maxima Legal, together with partners from Athens (Corporate Deals) and Cyprus (Stelios Americanos & Co.) accompanied the acquisition of the hotel and land on Crete island (Greece) to create the new modern 4* hotel.

Commercial closing took place on Thursday, July 7th and was successful. In addition to the purchase of the objects, simultaneously the transactions on the renovation of the existing hotel and construction of new buildings, as well as the rental and operation of the new hotel for 5 years were closed. In addition, we have structured and implemented the corporate tax and tax models for financing the above transactions, as well as of owning and operating the hotel. We thank our colleagues and partners for the good work!

“It shall be noted a growing interest in the purchase of the tourist objects in Greece as from a part of the Russian citizens and (increasingly) from the Chinese, and the English citizens. The dynamics of development of the tourism industry in Crete and Greece in general are very positive and, given the low property prices and services in Greece, such projects can show a good margin in the range of 10-12% per year on investments” - said Vladimir Kilinkarov, head of the project legal team, the partner of Maxima Legal.

Last weekend Maxim Avrashkov, managing partner of law firm Maxima Legal participated in a strategy session of Leaders Club in St Petersburg and Leningrad Region.

During dynamic two-day strategy session members of Leaders Club developed key principles of business alliance for St Petersburg unit. In the second part of the event the presentation of a few projects that would be implemented with participation of Leaders Club took place.

Oleg Grinko, a member of the professional community of directors “Direktorium”, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ZAO “Sberinvest” (ZAO “Upravliaiushchiia kompaniia “Sberezheniia I investitsii”) took part in the strategic session of the Club. He spoke about management system in Tavrida Electric.
Dmitri Yalov, Deputy Chairman of the Government of Leningrad Region – Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development and Investment Activity, Julia Ludinova head of the project office of the Administration of St Petersburg were also guests of the event. Representatives of state executive bodies (SEB) spoke about principles of project management implemented in the regions and project offices created, designed to improve the investment climate of Leningrad Region and St Petersburg.

Summing up the strategic session the regional coordinator of Leaders Club Vyacheslav Traktovenko thanked all members of the Club for productive work and noted the importance of such event for St Petersburg unit. “We conduct the strategic session already for the second time and today we can confidently say that we have performed really a lot from the things planned in 2015. Not all goals set last summer have been achieved, but we will make maximum efforts to overcome all obstacles on our way.”

As part of practice Private Wealth experts of Maxima Legal together with international partners advise a private client conducting business in the area of agro-tourism and real estate in different jurisdictions on issues of international tax planning. In this case, our company is developing the structure of the clients ownership of the assets referred by the client (real estate objects, financial assets and so on) for the purpose of optimization of these assets taxation taking into account interests of the client and requirements of applicable legislation of Russia, Austria, Romania and Malta.

Legal firm Maxima Legal took part in the qualification-based selection organized by OOO “Sberbank Investitsii” in order to form a register of accredited legal services suppliers.

On August 10, the tendering committee summed up the results of selection, based on the results of which Maxima Legal entered the register of accredited suppliers on the block “Court proceedings in the RF.”

General information about the competition is available on the following link: http://zakupki.gov.ru/223/purchase/public/purchase/info/documents.html?noticeId=4030107&epz=true&style44=false

Maxima Legal team has successfully conducted due diligence (legal review) of a large set of assets in Moscow planned to be purchased by the Group of Companies “Etalon”. This set included, in particular, a few companies and over one hundred different types of real estate facilities (buildings, constructions, land plots). As part of due diligence issues of corporate law, privatization, real estate and urban development, land, antitrust and labor legislation, big amount of commercial and financial agreements were thoroughly analyzed. ML experts submitted to the client a detailed report on due diligence (over 300 pages) as well as a specified list of risks to assess feasibility of entering the project.

Elena Kilinkarova, Counselor, Head of Tax Law Practice of Maxima Legal joined the editorial board of the new journal “Gosudarstvennyi i munitsipalnyi finansovyi control” of the Publishing Group “Yurist”. E. Gracheva Doctor of Juridical Science, Professor, D. Vinnitskii Doctor of Juridical Science, Professor, M. Ivlieva Candidate of Juridical Science, Associate Professor and other outstanding figures of modern jurisprudence also joined the staff of the editorial board.

The journal is aimed at the broad audience: civil servants of different levels, lawyers of enterprises and institutions, attorneys and barristers, representatives of science, accountants and auditors whose scientific interests and practical activity are connected with issues of cash flow control, performing duties in the financial market as well as in the area of insurance, taxation, formation of state and local budgets.

http://lawinfo.ru/catalog/magazines/gosudarstvenniy-i-municipalniy-finansoviy-kontrol/

On May 29th the Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after Kirov sited the main sports event of the legal society of Saint Petersburg - SPb Legal Run. It was the second time when this competition was held in Saint Petersburg and this year it was attended by more than twenty legal companies of Saint Petersburg, their friends and relatives. The event managed to raise 759 thousand rubles, which will be transferred to Charity foundation “Podari Zhizn”.

This year Maxima Legal team sponsored the event and was present at the running race “en masse”.

We thank everyone for their participation and the great time!

On April 25th were published the results of an independent study of the best law firms in 2016 according to Chambers Europe 2016.

Maxima Legal was noted again by Chambers Europe in the category of General Business Law - St. Petersburg.

Today the rating covers 53 jurisdictions in Europe, it has been published since 1990 and is one of the most prestigious legal ratings in the world.

Complete rating of the companies recommended by Chambers&Partners in Russia is available at - http://www.chambersandpartners.com/guide/europe/7/180/1

On April 23rd Elena Kilinkarova, counselor of Maxima Legal, the law company, acted as a judge in the finals of Ros-IFA 2016 Competition of the International Taxation-2016.

Final competition, organized by the youth section of the Russian branch of the International Fiscal Association (Ros-IFA), was held in St. Petersburg State University, which team has won the competition in 2015. In the finals with the dignity were competing for the championship the teams of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) of the MFA of Russia. The winner of the competition became the team of FU under the Russian Government.

Ros-IFA - Russian non-profit organization that investigates the Russian aspects of the international taxation, the Russian branch of the International Fiscal Association (IFA).

We congratulate the winners of the competition on a well-deserved victory and wish them further success!

Maxim Avrashkov, Managing Partner of Maxima Legal for the fifth time took part in the program of St. Petersburg International Legal Forum-2016, which took place on May 18th-20th.

St. Petersburg International Legal Forum (SPILF) for the last six years annually brings together the Ministers of Justice and the judges of the various countries, heads of the international organizations, partners of the law firms - market leaders, heads of the legal departments of major companies, representatives of the state authorities and law schools from more than 80 countries.

IP&IT team of ML headed by Natalia Demina represent a client in one complicated patent case. The case concerns with protection of exclusive rights under patents granted for an inventions in field of the use of different microbial strains. It should be noted that a microbial strain and, moreover, its application is, in practice, quite a rare patent object. Maxima Legal represents interests of a company that deals with issues of high quality composite microbiological fertilizers implementation in our country. ML works on this project together with the Russian patent agent Lyubov Mikhailovna Korchemnaya.

On April 21st Maxima Legal, the law company, once again gathered the guests to discuss the topics of the inheritance planning. The event was moderated by Natalia Demina, Head of the Private Wealth practice, and Elena Antonova, company advisor on this practice, spoke about “the pros” and “cons” of inheritance under the law, advantages of inheritance under the will, as well as about the basic inheritance planning tools.

On April 13th Anna Sabanina, Head of the Marketing and Communications Department of Maxima Legal, participated in the Legal Tech Conference, organized by the Legal Insight, judicial magazine with the support of pravo.ru portal and dedicated to the automation of the legal business, implementation of the specialized software in the legal work.

The event was held in the City Hall of the Fund of Development of the Internet Initiatives, Moscow, snd it was attended by heads of the law companies and the experts in the field of information technologies, improving the efficiency of the legal work.

http://legalinsight.ru/legaltech/

Vladimir Kilinkarov, Partner and Head of the Practice of Maxima Legal, Public Private Partnership, has participated in the Third Infrastructure Congress “The Russian Week of PPP”, held in Moscow from March 29th to April 1st.

The event is the largest of its kind in Russia and CIS countries, attracts the representatives of the federal, regional and local authorities, Russian and the foreign investors and experts in the field of infrastructure and the public private partnerships.

Vladimir has spoken in a number of sections on the legal aspects of the public private partnerships and new legislation in this area.