EAHCISS News (English)

During today's AGM for Sberbank, that was held via video-attendance, the  shareholders approved the payment of dividends. The dividend over 2024 is 34.84 Rubles per ordinary share and will be paid to shareholders that hold shares at the end of day on July 18th 2025. ADR holders (holders of depositary receipts) will not be able to receive dividends, but may claim dividends after conversion of ADR's into ordinary shares. More information can be found here: https://www.sberbank.com/investor-relations/corporate-governance/annual-meeting-2025  

In this post we provide a fourth update on recent Russian court decisions. Case 4: Who needs a lawyer to claim Rosneft dividends in court...? The fourth case involves mr. Bychkov that held ADR's (depositary receipts) of Rosneft via the Cypriot broker EXT Ltd. and had them successfully converted via forced conversion. Mr. Bychkov then requested Rosneft to pay the unpaid dividends, which was only about 17,000 Rubles. Rosneft refused the request, stating that it wasn't sufficiently proven that mr. Bychkov owned the ADR's at the Rosneft dividends over 2021 that were returned by Raiffeisenbank to Rosneft (in the amount of 6,915,398,471.46 Rubles!!) included the dividends that were due to mr. Bychkov. Mr. Bychkov then went to court himself, without a lawyer. The relatively low claim of 17,000 Rubles would make it economically non-viable to be represented by a lawyer. Mr. Bychkov also didn't attend the hearing, probably due to travelling costs. The court established tha...

In this post we provide a third update on recent Russian court decisions. Case 3: Raiffeisenbank was ordered to pay financial compensation for failing to execute a request for forced conversion The third case involves mr. Nesterenko that held ADR's (depositary receipts) of MTS via Interactive Brokers. Mr. Nesterenko requested Raiffeisenbank forcefully convert of his MTS ADR's. Raiffeisenbank Russia refused the request which a general statement that included various reasons why such a request can be rejected. Mr. Nesterenko considered the rejection to be unlawful and went to court to request compensation from Raiffeisenbank. The court determined that mr. Nesterenko submitted the documents that he could reasonably gather and that Raiffeisen put unreasonable conditions in place. The court also considered that Raiffeisenbank, as a professional bank, has it's own resources to verify the information that was provided. The court decided that Raiffeisenbank had to pay compens...

In this post we provide a second update on recent Russian court decisions. Case 2: Taking western brokers to court in Russia to transfer securities The second case involves the Cypriot company Lafourcad, that was owned by a Russian individual. Lafourcad wanted to transfer 6,360,000 shares of Sberbank from its account with EFG Bank Luxemburg to its account with the Russian broker Renaissance Capital. EFG Bank refused and mentioned sanctions as the reason to refuse the transfer. Lafourcad then sent an application to the competent sanctions authority in Luxemburg to get authorization for the transfer, which was rejected.  Lafourcad then took EFG Bank to court in Russia for refusing the transfer. The Russian custodian for EFG Bank, Rosbank, which held the Sberbank shares for EFG Bank, was also involved in the case a third party.  The Russian court determined that EFG Bank illegally refused to carry out the requested transfer and ordered Rosbank to carry out the transfer. As a re...

In this post we provide a first update on recent Russian court decisions. These court decisions were kindly provided by Irina Sibirina from the legal firm Itlektis.ru . More case law on Sberbank securities will follow soon. Case 1: Forced transfer of Rosneft shares and unpaid Rosneft dividends The first case involves an investor, mr. Gubaev, that bought Rosneft shares via the Swiss CBH Bank (the case materials speak in one section about directly buying ordinary shares but refer to converted depositary shares in another section). He applied to get his ordinary shares forcefully transferred from CBH Bank to his Russian brokerage account with ATON. According to the court materials, the chain of custody involved The Belgian Branch of Bank of New York Mellon and Citibank Russia. The Russian appellate court ruled in October 2023 that Citibank Russia had wrongfully denied the request for a forced transfer and ordered Citibank Russia to carry out the forced transfer. The full case materials ...

Fix Price has announced a share swap program. The share swap allows ADR-holders to swap the ADR's in Fix Price for ordinary shares of the Russian PJSC Fix Price. Fix Price has communicated that the transaction should be considerd economically neutral and that Kazakh holding of Fix Price will remain the majority shareholder in PJSC Fix Price. All information can be found on: https://exchange.fix-price.com/en/. Interested investor are advised to read the memorandum that is published on the website above.  Unfortunately, investors from countries that are considered unfriendly from a Russian perspective cannot participate in the share swap, unless the investor received permission from the Russian government. This permission can be requested from the Government Commission for Control over Foreign Investments in the Russian Federation (http://government.ru/department/560/) on the basis of article 1(b) of Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated 01.03.2022 No. 81 (as amende...

The Russian Central Bank took a decision on the 6th of June 2025 that provides for a new round of automatic conversion of DR's ([global or American] depositary receipts / GDR's / ADR's) that are stored in Russian infrastructure.  The decision by the Russian Central Bank is based on Russian legislation that allows the Central Bank of Russia to set the date for a (new) round of automatic conversion. The legislation does not allow the Central Bank of Russia to set a date for a new round of so called 'forced conversion', where investors can request the 'forced conversion' of DR's stored outside of Russian infrastructure, without any support of western brokers or depositary banks. The date for forced conversion / forced transfer (of ordinary Russian shares) was set in the law itself. Unfortunately, this new round of automatic conversion will not be helpful to most western investors that seek to convert their Russian DR's, as their DR's are kept with...