The announcement that the retirement age in Russia for both men and women will increase – from 60 to 65 for men by 2028 and from 55 to 60 for women by 2028 – have led to quite an outcry, says Stefan Weber, Head of Noerr’s Moscow Office, including recent demonstrations by thousands of protesters across the country.

BGP Litigation has launched an Antimonopoly law practice, which will be headed by Counsel Irina Akimova.

Russian dispute resolution lawyer Magomed Gasanov has been promoted to Partner at Alrud.

Former Dentons Partner Mikhail Dikopolskiy has joined Capital Legal Services to head the firm's Corporate practice in Moscow.

New Type of Industrial Parks

Starting from the mid-2000s, industrial parks (IPs) have developed rapidly in Russia. By 2018, there were 166 IPs located across 51 constituent parts of Russia.

Partner Roman Serb-Serbin has left Danilov & Partners to join what the firm only describes as "a major Russian investment company."

Former Clifford Chance Partner Tamer Amara and his team have joined the Moscow office of Dentons.

Former Pepeliaev Group lawyers Vladimir Sokov, Sergey Klimenko, Nigina Rabieva, and Radmila Nikitina have moved, with their teams, to Dentons’ Moscow office.

Nelly Tomashevskaya will head Tomashevskaya & Partners’s new Privacy & Data Protection Practice.

Alexey Statsenko has been appointed the EY Regional General Counsel for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe & Central Asia.

Baker McKenzie has announced the election of 67 new partners, including Olha Demianiuk in Kyiv, Sergei Lomakin and Kirill Vikulov in Moscow, and Caner Elmas and Duygu Gultekin in Istanbul.

Eversheds Sutherland has expanded its tax practice in Russia by hiring Andrey Grachev and a team of lawyers from KPMG. Grachev joins Eversheds as Counsel.

Alexander Dolgov has joined Squire Patton Boggs as a partner in the Financial Services Practice Group of the firm's Moscow office.

Eversheds Sutherland Russia has announced that Andrey Grachev has joined the firm as Head of Tax, bringing his team along with him.

Senior Counsel Edwin Tham and Counsel Peter Khokhlov have been promoted to Partner at the former Danilov & Konradi law firm in Moscow, which now changes its name to Danilov & Partners.

Public private partnerships and concessions are effective tools to allow governments to partner with the private sector to develop and finance key infrastructure projects. These forms of collaboration are particularly relevant in Russia, where infrastructure investment needs are estimated by the World Bank to be about USD 1 trillion.

The winners of the 2017 CEE Deal of the Year Awards were announced at the first ever CEE Legal Matters Deal of the Year Awards Banquet last night in Prague. The biggest smiles in the joyous and music-filled celebration of CEE lawyering, perhaps, were on the faces of Partners from Avellum and Sayenko Kharenko, which, along with White & Case and Latham & Watkins, won the award both for Ukrainian Deal of the Year and CEE Deal of the Year for their work on the 2017 Ukraine Eurobond Issue (a story initially reported by CEE Legal Matters on October 2, 2017).

"The biggest challenge for companies in Russia today is the serious administrative burden," says Andrei Gusev, Managing Partner at Borenius Russia. "There are a huge number of outdated conglomerate regulations in various sectors, applied since the Soviet times, that leads to contradictions among requirements and regulations."