Vadym Samoylenko Offers His Insight into How to Overcome Corporate Law Conflicts at II Annual Corporate Law Forum
November 14, 2008

Vadym Samoylenko, a partner with Asters, spoke at the II Annual Corporate Law Forum hosted by Ukrainian Bar Association (UBA) in Kyiv on 31 October 2008, addressing the "How to Eliminate Corporate Law Flaws" session.

This year, the Forum reviewed the scheduled subjects through the prism of the Law of Ukraine "On Joint Stock Companies" signed into law by the President of Ukraine and promulgated on October 29, 2008. Vadym Samoylenko's report "Overcoming Conflicts in Ukrainian Corporate Law" was no exception. It did provide an insight into the ways of overcoming conflicts in corporate law and offered to the participants certain practical instruments applicable to specific legal situations. The subject-matter of the report turned to be the topical issue for discussion.

Commenting on the discussion outcome, Vadym Samoylenko emphasizes that "unfortunately, the new Law of Ukraine "On Joint Stock Companies" not only fails to eliminate conflicts in the corporate law, however, upon the lawmakers' imprudence and carelessness, creates a number of new ones. Specifically, according to the Final and Transitional Provisions of the said Law, within 2 years of the effective time thereof, the general part of the currently effective Law of Ukraine "On Business Associations" and the part dealing with joint stock companies shall apply subject to the provisions of the new law".

Further, according to Mr. Samoylenko, numerous requests by practicing corporate lawyers to codify in the new law all of the joint stock companies related provisions contained in various laws were ignored by the lawmakers, which further expanded the grounds for multiple interpretations of the conflicting provisions within the same legally regulated subject-matter.

For the second consecutive time, the UBA corporate law forum offered to its participants a number of professional discussion panels to ensure constructive exchange of views on the most critical problems of Ukrainian corporate law and to project its development following the development tendencies of the EU law. Participating in the interactive discussions at the Forum were lawyers, attorneys, judges, governmental officials, members of non-governmental and legal professional organizations, researchers and journalists.