Applicability of Provisions on Freedom of Contract to Corporate Relationships in a Public Company

The work is devoted to the question of whether it is possible to apply the principle of freedom of contract to corporate relationships in a public company, similar to how it is applied in contract law. The current Russian law takes a different position in this regard, maintaining an irrefutable presumption of imperativeness of corporate law that regulates public companies in order to protect the rights of minority shareholders. The thesis proves that the current regulatory decision is not so unambiguously correct, taking into account the arguments that may actually be in support of it, while there are a number of strong reasons in favor of the opposite position. Thus, the value of the presumption of dispositivity of the corporate law norms governing relations in a public company is justified on the basis of a number of economic arguments, among which can be named the low quality of state regulation, the contract theory of a corporation, the efficiency of capital markets and, as a result, the intersection of interests of minority and majority shareholders.