Infocenter

Experts of Pavlova&Partners defended the CEO of a major industrial company in a corporate dispute on recovery of 4 billion rubles of damages from him. The case was handled by the litigation project manager Sergei Soldatenko.

The shareholders tried to recover damages for their benefit directly from the CEO, company and Board members. According to the plaintiffs, value of the company’s shares at the stock market dropped as the result of the activity of the above mentioned persons. The shareholders considered the difference in value to be their lost profit.

The court of the first jurisdiction as well as the court of appeals agreed with the arguments of the defendants, as the plaintiffs hadn’t proved the responsibility of each of the defendants that were members of the Board of Directors at the time the controversial steps were made. The responsibility of the company and its CEO and the possibility of the recovery of damages from the company for the benefit of the shareholders were not proved as well.

The court ruling has a crucial importance for court practice involving possibility of the recovery of damages for the benefit of the shareholders directly regardless of corporate rules, by using tort claims, for example.