‘Christmas Meetings in Elizabetes Street: Crediting Issues of Shipowners and Some Aspects of Legal Relationships’’

On 10 December 2010 the Christmas meeting was held at Monika Centrum Hotels in Elizabetes Street, Riga. The meeting gathered representatives of Latvian and Russian banks engaged into crediting of shipping and law companies specialized in maritime law.  

 

The Managing Partner of International Law Offices, Arthur Nitsevych, participated in the traditional Christmas Reading organized and held by associated partners ‘Marine Legal Services’.  

 

On Christmas Eve and New Year, with Jingle Bells background, tasting mull wine and pipark?kas, organizers of the meeting, lawyers of the Latvian law firm ‘Marine Legal Services’, Kuznetsov Eduard and Yuliya Kazmina, proposed to their clients and colleagues to discuss the issue having been arisen during 2010, namely, how to build the relations between banks being loan providers with the borrowers in case of default in payment under the loan agreements if the subject of crediting is a vessel or several vessels.  

 

The meeting was attended by the Chairman of Riga District Arbitration Court, Mr Leonid Ausinch and representatives of commercial banks of Latvia (AS ‘Latvijas Biznesa Banka’, AS ‘Baltikums’, AS ‘Aizkraukles Banka’, AS ‘Norvik Banka’, AS ‘Swedbank’) and Russia (OJSC ‘VTB-Leasing’ and OJSC ‘Morskoy Bank’).

 

 The hopes of the organizers came true, a lot of questions had been put at the meeting related to the issue in question, namely:

 

 & bull; formalizing the vessel’s mortgages in various jurisdictions, peculiarities in executing the required documents considering legislation of the corresponding countries;

 

• possible actions of the bank to protect their interests in case of actual insolvency of the shipowner;

 

• choice of the arbitration or court to hear the claims of the banks on the merits;

 

 • jurisdictions preferable for arrest of the vessels (according to the duration, costs);

 

• jurisdictions preferable for enforcement of the vessels’ sale (according to the duration, costs).

 

 Besides the organizers, lawyers from various law companies gave answers to the questions at the meeting among which were Andrey Suprunenko, Maxim Puslis, Andrey Shashorin (Saint Petersburg, Moscow) and Arthur Nitsevych, Managing Partner of International Law Offices (Kiev/Odessa).

 

n

 The Chairman of Riga District Arbitration Court, Leonid Ausinch, covered the court practice, namely, procedural peculiarities of the shipping cases heard in arbitration court.

 

The meeting was followed by the dinner and the foreign participants visited the Freeport of Riga where they could go on board of ‘Varna’ ice-breaker; besides, they could see the Latvian Coast Guard Service and the Historic Centre of Riga.