PRESS: Russian min offers barring minority owners from information

MOSCOW, Jan 22 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Justice Ministry has prepared amendments seeking to prohibit owners of less than 5% stakes in companies from requesting additional information about companies and ordering owners of 5–25% stakes to justify their requests, business daily Vedomosti reported Friday, citing a representative of the ministry.

Under the current law, any shareholder can request information about the company, except for protocols of meetings of executives and accounting documents which are available only to the shareholders who own more than 25%.

The authors of the amendments said that minority holders often abuse their rights and hamper the companies’ work.

Director for investments of TKB BNP Paribas Investment Partners Vladimir Tsuprov said that the amendments can compound a problem for direct investment funds. He said that cases when a minority shareholder asked the company to answer multiple formal requests are known but, according to Managing Partner of EuroAtlantic Investments Ltd Vasily Sidorov, they are not as numerous as the cases when minority holders’ rights are violated.

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