The Russian government has agreed not to extend until 2024 the right of companies to elect boards of directors for a three-year term, Interfax reports, citing a source familiar with the discussion.
The discussion in the government is related to the presence of proposals to extend until 2024 the validity of a number of temporary corporate rules, which were adopted in the summer of 2022 against the background of the introduction of Western sanctions against Russia due to the military operation in Ukraine, and then were extended until 2023. Initially, a bill on the extension of a number of anti-crisis measures was prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development, but in the end a similar bill was submitted to the State Duma by a group of deputies led by the chairman of the committee on property, land and property relations Sergei Gavrilov.
As a result of discussions with the participation of interested departments, the Russian government agreed to abandon the idea of extending until 2024 the right of companies to elect boards of directors for three years, the source said.
According to him, in addition, the government agreed to limit itself to extending for six months, and not for a year, as originally planned, the right of companies to have a “truncated” composition of the board of directors in the event of the departure of more than half of the composition, if at least three people remain on it . Similarly, it was decided to extend only until July 1, 2024 the right of companies subject to foreign sanctions not to form a board of directors at all.
It was also agreed upon to extend for only six months the increased requirements for the size of the shareholding of an investor who wishes to request documents from the company or challenge its transactions, actions of a joint-stock company or members of its board of directors. As a general rule, the holder of 1% of the company’s shares has this opportunity, but from 2022 a package of at least 5% is required for these actions.
According to the source, when making the decision, the position of the Bank of Russia, which had previously criticized the idea of prolonging the mentioned rules, was taken into account.
Source: Rosbalt
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