Review of the M&A market in Russia and CIS

Andrei Dontsov

Andrei Dontsov is a partner at White & Case heading the firm’s Corporate/M&A practice in Russia. He specialises in domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions with primary focus on the financial, energy and natural resources, industrial and insurance sectors. Andrei advises top Russian and international investors on a broad range of corporate matters, including public and private transactions, joint ventures, corporate restructurings and corporate governance matters. He is recognised as one of the top corporate/M&A lawyers in Russia by the leading legal benchmark publications, such as Chambers (individual Band 1 ranking), The Legal 500 and IFLR1000, for more than ten consecutive years.

Andrei is constantly engaged in shaping new approaches to promotion of legal services and creating added value in clients’ services. He is an author of seminar series for in-house lawyers: focused on efficient cooperation of in-house legal units and legal services providers. Andrei has authored a specialised lecture course on M&A for law students, which he has been successfully teaching for more than 10 years at top Russian law schools, including the Moscow State University, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and the Moscow State Law University.

Dmitri Sedov

Dmitri is co-head of the firm's Moscow office, co-head of the Russia/CIS business in the Investment Banking Division (IBD) and oversees M&A for Russia/CIS. He is also a member of the Russia Executive Leadership Group. Dmitri joined Goldman Sachs in 2007, as an executive director in the IBD Russia/CIS team in Moscow, focusing on Technology, Media and Telecom, Infrastructure, Industrials and Healthcare clients in the region. He was named managing director in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, Dmitri worked in the Investment Banking Division of Lehman Brothers International in London, where he focused on telecom clients in EMEA. Earlier in his career, he worked in investment banking at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in London, in investment banking and equity research at CAIB Investment Bank AG in Moscow, and in the management consulting department of PwC in Moscow.

Dmitri earned a degree in telecommunication engineering from Moscow Technical University of Telecommunications in 1994 and an MBA from Duke University in 2001.

Elaine Green

Elaine Green is Editor, EMEA Bureaus at Mergermarket/Dealreporter and is responsible for managing the team across Europe and Middle East and African (EMEA) as well as being Global Head of Shipping. She has been with the company since its inception in 2000 and is an experienced reporter, editor and manager having worked both within the group and at wide range of other European publications. Her qualifications include a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA).

Pavel Vlasov

Pavel is the Corporate Development Director at Avito, responsible for running strategy, M&A and partnerships. Pavel has extensive experience in Russian and cross-border M&A and venture capital transactions, in Sberbank since 2009, in banking since 2005. Pavel holds an MBA from Bologna Business School.

André Dufour

André Dufour practices business law, especially in the field of mergers and acquisitions. He is a member of BLG's National Management Committee, as well as Montréal Regional Managing Partner.

André advises businesses of all sizes, in addition to financial institutions, at both the national and international levels, with respect to their commercial activities and transactions of all kinds.

He has been involved in a broad range of commercial transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganisations, financing (especially venture capital and private equity transactions), joint ventures, as well as the drafting and negotiation of various types of commercial contracts.

Alexander Zharskiy

Alexander Zharskiy heads AlRUD’s Corporate and M&A Practice, as well as Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Industry Group. Alexander leads the firm's corporate, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and private equity work. He has more than 20-years’ experience in in-bound and cross-border transactions in a variety of sectors, including pharmaceuticals, telecommunication, media and technology, retail, agribusiness, financial sector, natural resources and real estate.

Alexander is an officer of the IBA “Corporate and M&A Law” committee: he regularly speaks on corporate /M&A topics at Russian and international conferences.

Alexander holds a J.D. degree, as well as an LLM degree from the University of Manchester. Alexander started his legal career in 1998, joined ALRUD in 2004 and has been a partner since 2007. He is recommended as a leading legal advisor on Corporate and M&A matters, by Chambers Europe and Global, The Legal 500, IFLR 1000, Who's Who Legal, Best Lawyers.

Andrey Kartashyan

Andrey Kartashyan is a Vice President, the Head of Sberbank M&A. He is a M&A executive with 14 years’ experience in the field, including 10 years at Sberbank. Andrey has led and co-led an extensive number of projects, including a JV with BNP Paribas Personal Finance on POS and car financing (Cetelem Bank), JVs with Yandex in e-wallet and e-commerce (Yandex Money and Yandex Market), a JV with Mail.ru in food and mobility (O2O); acquisitions leading to Sberbank ecosystem development: internet holding Rambler Group, e-grocery leader SberMarket, geo service 2GIS, audio streaming company Zvuk, voice recognition leader SpeechPro, business process outsourcing company Intercomp, medical appointment startup DocDoc, classified job search Rabota.ru, etc. Andrey also participated in the divestures of Sberbank Slovakia, VS Bank (Ukraine), and Denizbank (Turkey).

Andrey holds a master’s degree in Finance, from New Economic School and a PhD in Law, from Moscow State University. He has certificates in leadership and negotiation for executives from INSEAD, Harvard Business School, and Stanford University. In 2019, Andrey was recognized as one of the young economic leaders of Russia under the age of forty, according to the results of «Choiseul 100 Russia» project of The Choiseul Institute.