Litigation In Central Asia And The Caucasus And MWP's Dispute Resolution Practice

Uncertain times

The Kazakh economy retains a positive long-term outlook, with vast energy and mineral wealth that will remain in global demand in the decades to come, and a history of strategic investment by the state that is beginning to bear fruit in diversifying Kazakhstan's economy away from reliance solely on primary resources. That said, while demand remains healthy in the energy and mining sectors, since 2014 there has been a significant drop in prices and, correspondingly, in earnings, which is inevitably having an effect on the level of commercial and consumer demand in the economy as a whole. Added to this has been the equally inevitable devaluation of the Kazakh tenge since it was floated against world currencies in August 2015. Although the floatation has had the hoped-for positive impact on exports, GDP is forecast to be only 0.5% in 2016, well down from the 4.1% of 2014, and 6% of 2013. This has added to the sense of uncertainty in the business community and increased the frequency of breaches in commercial contracts and reluctance to enter into them in the first place.

The region's legal markets today

In times of economic uncertainly, full-service law firms will typically shift the focus of their resources away from financing and transactional work towards litigation, debt recovery, restructuring and insolvency. This partly reflects a reaction to the greater volumes of such work coming through their doors, but also the strategic decisions taken at management level to go out and get more of it. Apart from this somewhat knee-jerk survival reaction, however, legal actors in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have also been able to take advantage of their countries' positions as leading members of the CIS, not affected by any of the sanctions currently imposed against Russian and Ukrainian individuals and entities by Western states.

MWP's region-leading expertise

Michael Wilson & Partners, Ltd. (MWP) was established in Almaty in 1998, building on the experience of its director, Michael E. Wilson, an English and Australian-qualified solicitor who rose to be a leading partner at Baker & McKenzie, having established B&M's Major Project Practice Group globally and all of B&M's offices in the Central Asia and Caucasus Region. In 2003 MWP established an additional office in Baku, from which it has been able to focus on work generated in Azerbaijan, but also other projects in the Caucasus and Ukraine. With over 30 fee-earners, MWP is able to...