OREANDA-NEWS. December 21, 2012. The United Metallurgical Company together with the Chusovoy Steel Works (ChSW) won the claim filed by QuorumFund on the additional issue of ChSW shares. On July 2011, the arbitration court of Perm Krai decided to dismiss the claim. The court’s decision was affirmed by the courts of appeal and cassation.

ChSW and OMK protected themselves from attempts to invalidate the additional issue of shares which resulted in the ownership of Metalloinvest by V.P. Anisimov, which became a majority shareholder as it possessed 86.69% of the enterprise’s stake. Later on, the company increased its stake to 100% due to the right of the mandatory buyout of shares.

Head of the Corporate Management Department at OMK Roman Gukov commented on the court’s decisions, “The claim was filed in September 2011, when OMK was a management company of ChSW. We participated in the consideration of the case and are completely satisfied with the court’s decision. The enterprise had a very difficult financial situation and the issue of shares enabled it to attract about 4.5 billion rubles in direct investments. The claimant's demands consisted of the intention to keep his share in the charter capital, although he was reluctant to invest in the enterprise as other shareholders do. It was more likely greenmail than a desire to protect the rights of minority shareholders. In September of the running year, ChSW received the enforcement order to collect court costs from the claimant amounting to 6.945 million rubles. This sum is unprecedented for the Russian court practice. At present, the search for QuorumFund’s property has been initiated.”

Anastasiya Poletaeva, an attorney for the Asnis and Partners law company, who presented OMK’s interests, said, “Until recently, the court referred to the “reasonableness of the compensation size” when making a decision to collect court costs from the losing party, and the charged sums did not usually exceed some tens of thousands of rubles at the most. Such sums often enabled individuals and companies to misuse their right to judicial protection and make a defendant spend time and impressive sums of money on professional representation in the court. When the court of arbitration of Perm Krai made a decision, a sum of seven million rubles was a record for Russian court practice. However, not so long ago, this September, a court of arbitration decided to collect court costs amounting to about 32.5 million rubles. The changed approach to the issue of collecting court costs gives us hope that claimants will first carefully estimate their legal views before applying to court and stop filing claims that certainly have no prospects. This also concerns decisions of public (tax and customs) authorities which are often disputed. Courts are likely to start protecting the rights of taxpayers also in the line of collecting court expenses.”