at Russian
Institute
of Modern
Arbitration
at Russian
Institute
of Modern
Arbitration
On 7-8 December 2019, the Russian Institute of Modern Arbitration held the 3rd Russian Corporate Arbitration Moot Court Competition named after Professor V.P. Mozolin.
This is the third year of the Mozolin Moot Court Competition that brings together participants from all over the country. In 2019, 87 teams (342 participants) registered for the Competition, from Vladivostok, Tomsk, Ufa, Orenburg, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Barnaul, Pskov, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Vladimir, Tver, Krasnodar, Grozny, and Moscow.
This year’s case concerned many topical issues, such as, for instance, the relation between the arbitrability of corporate disputes and re-domiciliation; how bankruptcy supervision procedures affect the enforceability of an award; in which cases a deadlock can be resolved by expulsing a company participant; etc.
Students were invited to produce four written submissions, with 24 teams advanced from the written stage of the Competition to the oral rounds.
The oral rounds of the Competition included preliminary rounds (held on 7 December), play-off rounds (on 8 December) that took place in the conference rooms of the Russian Arbitration Center and the international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. The presentations of the teams were judged by over 60 arbitrators specialising in corporate law and arbitration.
The final round of the Competition was held on Sunday evening at the RAC offices between the teams of the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Tomsk State University.
The final round panel featured seven arbitrators: Olesya Petrol (Partner, Petrol Chilikov), Yulia Mikhalchuk (Counsel, Saveliev, Batanov & Partners), Konstantin Kroll (Partner, Dentons), Natalia Gulyaeva (Partner, Hogan Lovells), Yury Babichev (Counsel, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner), Maxim Rasputin (Counsel, Ivanyan & Partners), and Roman Bevzenko (Partner, Pepeliaev Group).
Top three teams at the Competition:
Best oralist: Viacheslav Grigoryev (Team 507, HSE).
Best written pleadings: Team 398, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
On 6 December 2019, a day before the oral rounds, we held a conference on the topical issues of corporate law and arbitration of corporate disputes.
Dina Iskanderova (Associate, Cleary Gottlieb) discussed the basic theories on re-domiciliation (in particular, the requirements for outgoing/ingoing jurisdictions), drew examples of “cheap and easy” and “expensive and difficult” jurisdictions for re-domiciliation, and invited the participants to discuss some issues arising in practice whenever a company “moves” into the Russian jurisdiction.
Nikolay Pokryshkin (Partner, Kulkov, Kolotilov & Partners) and Roman Zaitsev (Partner, Dentons) discussed the effect bankruptcy supervision procedures have on the arbitrability of the dispute and enforceability of the resulting award. The discussion touched upon the provisions of international arbitral institutions’ arbitration rules, the procedural issues of filing a claim with an arbitration after the initiation of bankruptcy receivership, the enforceability of the arbitration clause in such disputes, as well as the procedure of settlement of a dispute with a bankrupt party. Nikolay and Roman analysed the practice of courts in bankruptcy cases involving issues of enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, and gave practical tips as to how to increase the stability the award if a party to the dispute is declared bankrupt.
Rustem Miftakhutdinov (Head of Support of Bankruptcy Procedures and Recovery of Problem Debts of the Department of Litigation of PJSC Rosneft Oil Company), Konstantin Grichanin, (Deputy Director, Department of Litigation of PJSC Rosneft Oil Company) and Yulia Mikhalchuk (Counsel, Saveliev, Batanov & Partners) discussed the practical issues of expulsion of participants from a legal entity. In particular, their presentation concerned the grounds for expulsing participants from a public company.
The Russian Institute of Modern Arbitration thanks all participants, arbitrators, and speakers who took part the Competition.
The Institute would like to give special thanks to:
Our general partners: Ivanyan & Partners, Dentons;
Our partners: Saveliev, Batanov & Partners, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Hogan Lovells;
Our partners that allowed us to use their offices for the Competition: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, International and Comparative Law Research Center (ICLRC);
And our information partners: Advokatskaya Gazeta (Russian Attorney’s Newspaper), Zakon.ru, CIS Arbitration.
