Asters has successfully represented the interests of PrivatBank before the Supreme Court of Ukraine, securing a final ruling on the bank's ownership following its 2016 nationalization.
According to Asters, PrivatBank is the largest bank in Ukraine in terms of the number of clients, assets value, loan portfolio, and taxes paid to the national budget.
According to the firm, “on February 15, 2023, the Court delivered a final ruling, stopping the ex-owners' attempt to return PrivatBank, which was nationalized in 2016. The Supreme Court applied, for the first time, the Law of Ukraine No. 590-IX, which was adopted to eliminate gaps in Ukrainian legislation that previously allowed courts to resuscitate insolvent banks, which [had been] taken off the market due to their insolvency. The law also prohibits the return of the nationalized banks to their former owners.”
In 2022, Asters successfully represented PrivatBank in a number of cases, including two parallel arbitration proceedings before the London Court of International Arbitration regarding the enforcement of Eurobonds issued in 2010 and 2013 (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on October 10, 2022), another Supreme Court case relating to the bank's nationalization (as reported on August 3, 2022), and a UAH 152 million dispute regarding the ownership rights over its Dnipro head-office building (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on May 5, 2022).
Asters’ team included Co-Managing Partner Oleksiy Didkovskiy, Partner Andriy Pozhidayev, and Senior Associates Oleksii Ananiichuk, Vira Baulina, and Viktor Tarasenkov.
Editor's Note: On November 21, 2023, Asters announced that "the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the court of first instance in favor of the former owner of PrivatBank and closed the proceedings. This court's decision confirmed the impossibility of returning PrivatBank to its former owners."
