Event Report

GC Magazine and The Legal 500 partnered with KPMG, Reed Smith, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and Lidings to host the inaugural GC Summit: Russia in Moscow on 11 April 2019.

In-house counsel around the world often speak of similar challenges: time-resource scarcity, effectively managing a team, and maintaining relationships with key business stakeholders. But some sectors and some jurisdictions present unique sets of challenges – particularly when political considerations often brush up against business ones.

This holds true for Russia – a large economy with a well developed in-house community – and as The Legal 500 convened a summit of the region’s top legal minds, these challenges and opportunities were fleshed out in full by a combination of three in-depth panel discussions, an on-stage interview with a top general counsel, and collegial networking in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel.

The first of the event’s panel discussions was hosted by Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, and saw participants discuss the state of M&A in Russia, with a focus on the increasing tendency to use Russian law to govern M&A transactions, current M&A structures, and an overview of current trends in the M&A world. Moderated by Anton Sitnikov, partner and head of corporate/M&A at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, the participants grappled with the driving forces behind the changing M & A landscape in Russia and how in-house counsel can respond.

Reed Smith and associate Yuri Presniakov hosted the second panel: an interactive case study touching on aspects of sanctions, anti-bribery and anti-corruption compliance. The moderator and panellists walked the audience through a practical examination of a hypothetical business situation, examining the challenges involved and offering suggestions as to the advice in-house counsel should offer their businesses in such volatile cases.

The third of the day’s panel discussions took the form of a deep-dive into issues of GDPR and data protection from KPMG’s specialist data protection team, including moderator and manager of cybersecurity at KPMG, Kristina Borovikova, as well as two top in-house counsel. Continuing the summit’s focus on practicality, the moderator and panellists brought a wealth of experience in the area of data protection and offered the audience anecdotes and best practice tips that should be considered when in-house teams are grappling with their organization’s privacy challenges.

Rounding off the day’s events was a one-on-one discussion with long-time, battle-tested general counsel Alexey Zavalev, presently serving as vice president and general counsel of Ford Sollers. Interviewed on-stage by Lidings managing partner Andrey Zelenin, Zavalev detailed his senior role at Ford Sollers, how the general counsel can take the next step into board-level management, how to interface with the business, and the potential for artificial intelligence to disrupt the legal and business worlds.

The Legal 500 would like to thank all those who attended as well as our partners for this event: KPMG, Lidings, Reed Smith and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. A special thanks goes to the expert moderators and panellists, whose contributions and insights made the event a valuable experience for all attendees.