Mika shared his experience of doing business in Russia and the difficulties he had faced along the way. Mika also discussed whether lawyers will be required in the future when smart contracts and robot lawyers would be sufficiently developed and available for business.

Anton Kabakov, Partner at Forte Tax & Law and co-chairman of SPIBA Financial Committee shared some transfer pricing news.

Dmitry Khakhaev gave a presentation on the Interaction between the Pharmaceutical Industry, Practicing Doctors and Opinion Shapers: Legal Ways of Promoting Drugs  during a meeting with the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia in St. Petersburg held to discuss sensitive issues related to antitrust regulation.

Dmitry highlighted how the legislation on advertising in the pharmaceutical industry has evolved in the United States and the European Union where it is the most developed currently. Dmitry also shared his forecast about which of these countries Russia will follow in matter of drug advertising regulation.

In his presentation, Dmitry paid particular attention to issues related to online promotion of medicines both by pharmaceutical companies and opinion shapers such as athletes, actors, writers and other influential persons.

Vyacheslav Alexandrovich Tukaev, Deputy Head of the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia in St. Petersburg, as well as representatives of the pharmaceutical industry attended this meeting during which they addressed the following questions:

‒        How to determine whether a publication or website is a specialized one in which health professionals can advertise prescription drugs?

‒        Are users, pharmacists and doctors entitled to give some positive or negative feedback on medicines in social media? Could such feedback qualify as advertising?

‒        Should pharmaceutical companies be prohibited to promote drugs through health professionals and pharmacists? And should such prohibition be extended to opinion shapers?

‒        Can pharmaceutical companies report their unique prescription drug developments, and would this be advertising?

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The Forte Tax & Law team regularly monitors the legal services market and is always happy to share with you the latest legal trends. Today, we would like to bring to your attention Tax App, an interesting app which is getting more and more popular among tax specialists, lawyers and heads of financial departments.

Anton spoke about tax risk succession in M&A transactions (especially asset deals)

St. Petersburg International Business Association (SPIBA) Finance Committee held an event on Thursday November 16, 2017 to discuss the topic of General Director vs. Auditor. Thirty people, including consultants and business representatives, took part in this unusual meeting which was held in a kind of debate.

This seminar was held on October 11, 2017 in Helsinki

With 60% of the votes, our esteemed senior associate Anna Yakovleva ended up among the four elected chairmen.

Anton talked in great detail about the issues related to the introduction in the Tax Code of provisions on unjustified tax benefits and also outlined the clearly contentious side of these changes.