EAHCISS News (English)

In this post we provide a sixth update on recent Russian court decisions.  Case 6: Forced conversion in 2025 as a result of an unjustified rejection of the request for forced conversion in 2022 The sixth case involves US citizen mr. Zlatin who owned 20,000 ADR's (depositary receipts) of Sberbank via the broker HilltopSecurities. Hilltop refused to carry out a request for standard conversion.  Mr. Zlatin therefore applied for forced conversion. Raiffeisenbank rejected this request because the documents did not meet the standards set by Raiffeisenbank to execute the request for forced conversion. Mr. Zlatin then went to court in Moscow. He filed his claim relatively late in April 2024. When the case came to an end at the end of 2024 the first rulings from the Supreme Court started to come back in other cases. The ruling by the Supreme Court in those other cases that stated that Raiffeisenbank had unjustly set unreasonable standards for forced conversion and forced transfer. This...

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 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...