Minority Shareholders Protection of Legal Entity in the International Investment Law

This graduate paper is aimed at determination of ways of minority shareholders’ legal protection in international investment law (international investment arbitration). On this ground, the main objectives of the paper are: 1) to determine status of minority shareholder, as a subject of international investment law; 2) to distinguish ways of protection provided by this status; 3) to describe particularities of such ways on the base of minority shareholder legal standing on the national and international level, and also to evaluate their efficiency in international investment arbitration in the light of the national law. Based on this research the following conclusions were made: firstly, shareholders could participate in disputes with a state as investors; secondly, legal standing of minority shareholders are the same with majority ones in international investment law; thirdly, in international investment law the most important ways of protection are protection from expropriation and correspondence of state actions to the standard of fair and equitable treatment of investment; fourthly, in the case of breach on behalf of the state, a compensation will be paid to the shareholder, not to the entity, even if the claim was founded on a damage to the company itself; fifthly, from the comparison of means of protection in Russian legislation with means in international investment law it follows that the spheres of regulation are partly the same; however, in the majority of cases on the international level a minority shareholder as investor has more rights than on the national level; sixthly, it is necessary to take into account enforcement of investment arbitration decisions in Russian courts, as investor will meet with negative case law practice and also with ambiguity of the last amendments to the legislation on arbitration.