Noerr has announced at, as of January 19, its Russian office will be running independently as Arno Legal, working in cooperation with Noerr.

Former Clifford Chance Partner Arthur Iliev has joined Dentons in Moscow.

Antitrust practice in Russia is currently striving to strike the right balance, with less regulation of business in general and increased scrutiny in certain key areas.

Sergey Dmitriev has joined the Volga-Dnepr Group in Moscow as its Global Group General Counsel.

Alexandra Karachurina, Maria Borodina, and Vyacheslav Yugai have joined the Balayan Group as Partners in the firm's Corporate & Transactions practice.

Investors planning construction or reconstruction in St. Petersburg must consider the strict restrictions of Russian and international legislation for the protection of cultural heritage sites. These restrictions can roughly be divided into two levels: (1) those stipulated by Russian legislation for the protection of cultural heritage sites and (2) those stipulated by UNESCO legislation.

Contributed by Clifford Chance.

An interview with Jean-Francois Marquaire of CMS, about his path from France to Russia.

On March 24, 2021, CEE Legal Matters reported that Alrud had advised Sino-Russian joint venture AliExpress Russia on its investment in KazanExpress. We reached out to Alrud Partner and Head of Corporate/M&A Alexander Zharskiy for more information about the deal.

Framework Agreements (FAs) are like swimmers on a mixed medley relay. Each one does something different and it can be hard to understand what is going on. They are nevertheless used in many cross-border transactions in Russia, so here is an A-to-Z checklist to consider when negotiating FAs.

A carve-out of a business unit or a product portfolio may be required to optimize internal business processes or as part of a transaction on the sale of a business.

Despite the severe damage inflicted by COVID-19 on the Russian economy, the government and businesses have agreed that the local IT sector needs state incentives and support. Calls for accelerated development and state support for the local IT sector were among the main messages of several state agencies when the Russian president and government announced a series of tax benefits for the IT industry.

On February 24, 2021, CEE Legal Matters reported that Russia’s Intellectual Capital law firm had persuaded the Moscow Arbitrazh Court that a requirement that participants in a Rosatom tender for legal counsel be ranked in Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners was illegal and violated Russian competition law. CEELM spoke with several lawyers in the market to learn more about the matter.

In his recent Guest Editorial EY’s Georgy Kovalenko spoke of a rising trend of large companies building up their in-house legal functions to the point where they will not only compete with law firms in terms of catering to their internal clients but will also slowly branch out into offering their services to other companies. CEE Legal Matters spoke with Eugenia Volkoskaya, General Manager of Gazpromneft Expert Solutions – an enterprise that, while not there just yet, seems poised to do exactly what Kovalenko was foreseeing.

Halfway through the third quarter, 2021 is proving to be a good year for the Russian market, both in terms of M&A activity and a frothy IPO market. This uptick in part reflects unleashing the demand pent up over the COVID-19 recession (although Russia continues to struggle with the pandemic), as well as the upturn in global energy prices (given the oil & gas sector continues to lubricate the Russian economy).

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference, taking place in November 2021, and the recently published EU proposals on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism have been at the top of the agenda, this summer, for the majority of Russian energy and other industrial corporations. The green agenda has never been so acute in Russia, the current level of business engagement in the preparations for negotiations on the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement cannot compare to the one during the Kyoto Protocol period.

France's Altana, Italy's Nctm, and Germany's Beiten Burkhardt (which includes an office in Moscow) have announced the launch of their new law firm association, Advant, aimed at international clients moving into or expanding within Europe.

In its July 2020 Schrems II judgment, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the Privacy Shield for EU-US personal data transfers for commercial purposes. In a case concerning data transfers by Facebook Ireland to the US, the court concluded that because of its mass surveillance programs, the US does not provide the adequate – that is, a sufficient – level of personal data protection that is guaranteed by EU law. What conclusions may be drawn from Schrems II for personal data transfers to Russia almost one year later?