Legal Regulation of the Shareholders’ Agreements in Russia and Common Law Jurisdictions

A.V. Shevchuk Legal Regulation of the Shareholders’ Agreements in Russia and Common Law Jurisdictions The aim of the master’s thesis is to conduct analysis of, firstly, substantive legal regulation of shareholders’ agreements in the Russian Federation and common law countries, and, secondly, the approaches to the choice-of-law issue regarding such agreements. The master’s thesis consists of introduction, two chapters divided into six paragraphs, conclusion and bibliography. In the first chapter the author deals with the issues such as the notion of a shareholders’ agreement, sources of its regulation and the content of the rules of law regarding the matter. In the second chapter the issues of choice of law regarding shareholders’ agreements are covered: foreign element in shareholders’ agreements, distinction between legal entity’s personal law and contract law, as well as the connecting factors applied to shareholders’ agreements. As a result of the research, the author defines shareholders’ agreement as a contract regarding exercising shareholders’ (participants’) corporate rights, i.e. their rights to and arising out of the title to the shares; describes the list of sources of legal rules governing shareholders’ agreement and the latter’s usual content; characterizes the law applicable to shareholders’ agreements (lex voluntatis, and, in the absence of the choice made by the parties, lex societatis based on the theory of incorporation). Academic Supervisor: Olga Novikova, Candidate of Sciences, associate professor