Sayenko Kharenko

Olga Kyriusha focuses on corporate law and employment law matters. Olga advises clients on most sophisticated issues of shareholders’ agreements and put and call option agreements, as well as mechanisms of their extrajudicial enforcement in Ukraine. She also has experience in advising on the above issues participants of legal entities in highly regulated industries imposing statutory limitations on shareholding structure, e.g. audit activity, etc. Olga’s experience in corporate law matters includes advising on and managing deals on cross border debt to equity swap in LLC, where she advised on both corporate law and banking regulatory matters. Olga also has extensive experience in managing due diligence of companies across various sectors and industries, drafting transactional documents and advising on corporate structuring and corporate restructuring matters. Olga’s experience also includes advising on and managing setting up non-governmental and non-profit organizations (NGOs), representative offices of foreign companies in Ukraine, as well as otherwise establishing presence of local and international businesses and organizations under Ukrainian laws. She regularly acts as a corporate secretary for our clients and is experienced in developing all types of corporate documents and addressing any ongoing legal issues which may arise. In addition to her expertise in the field of corporate law, Olga routinely advises clients on the most sophisticated issues in the area of labour and employment law. She has a broad practice covering all types of employment matters: hiring/ transferring/ dismissing top managers and other employees; sophisticated employment agreements/contracts, job descriptions, internal labour policies/regulations and collective bargaining agreements of the companies accompanied with bringing employment related global group policies in line with Ukrainian law requirements; employee compensations and benefits; vacation and business trips; specifics of regulation of employment of specially protected categories of employees (e.g. disabled persons, pregnant women and employees with children), downtime, remote work, and other ongoing labour/employment issues. Olga also regularly handles sophisticated dismissal procedures and labour/employment law compliance audits of the Ukrainian targets. She has a special expertise in regulation of the work of foreign nationals in Ukraine, including for representative offices of foreign companies in Ukraine.

Svitlana Kheda, counsel at Sayenko Kharenko, heads labour practice, leading the firm’s privacy and data protection, anti-corruption and anti-bribery, and mediation groups. Dr Kheda is an internationally recognized expert in all of the above areas of law. Dr Kheda has extensive experience advising leading multinational companies on a wide range of sophisticated and complex issues in the field of labour/employment, privacy/data protection and anti-corruption/anti-bribery legislation. Dr Kheda also has extensive international experience in public-private partnerships in infrastructure. In particular, Dr Kheda focuses on adjusting the labour policies and procedures of multinational groups to Ukrainian legislation, including adapting corporate policies of foreign companies, developed according to the FCPA and the UKBA, to Ukrainian anticorruption legislation, and developing standard anti-corruption contract clauses and other corporate documentation in the anti-corruption area. Dr Kheda is experienced in conducting FCPA and the UKBA compliance due diligence reviews of Ukrainian targets, as well as internal investigations of compliance violations. Dr Kheda regularly prepares legal opinions on various instances of gift/charity/grant-in-aid giving and providing entertainment/hospitality to government officials and other subjects of liability for corruption offenses. Dr Kheda is renowned for her remarkable track record of complicated employment disputes settled amicably and on the clients’ terms. Svitlana Kheda is well-regarded for developing preventive mechanisms and risk mitigation solutions in the areas of her expertise.