Investors will be judged by the regulator – Kommersant FM

Private investors estimated losses from the suspension of trading on February 24, 2022 at RUB 140 million. We are talking about the losses of only six players who filed a lawsuit in the fall. They noted that on the day when hostilities began in Ukraine, the Moscow Exchange stopped trading for almost two hours. The site’s quotes fell by almost 50%. The applicants ask the arbitration court to declare such actions invalid.

The announced amount is not final. The investors’ lawyers say damages are still being assessed. What is the essence of the complaints against the exchange? Co-founder of the Skyfort investment platform Sergei Ishkov explains that due to the suspension of trading, players not only lost their own investments, but also ended up owing money to brokers:

“There are investors who trade with leverage, but when the price drops too much, the broker requires you to add money, securities, etc. to the account in order to maintain this position. As soon as trading stopped, there was a pause. At the moment when trading was reopened, the purchased positions were sharply lower than before closing.

Brokers, naturally, immediately forcibly closed the position; they simply did not give their clients a chance to add anything or exit the position earlier. Investors say, look, we could have managed to close the position earlier or, perhaps, slowly add collateral so that we would not be forced to close it.”

The second part of investors’ demands concerns the regulator’s inaction. In the complaint, this is formulated as “failure to fulfill direct obligations to promptly identify and counter crisis situations.” But the Central Bank does not admit its guilt for the losses of investors. There, on the contrary, they believe that the suspension of trading gave time to develop an action algorithm to prevent even greater damage to players. It is unlikely that the plaintiff-investors will be able to win the case, says Sergei Uchitel, partner at Pen & Paper:

“The simplest thing is to prove the amount of damages. Investors will probably be able to do this by justifying their financial losses. As for claims related to harmful actions, the presence of guilt and the cause-and-effect relationship between these actions and the unpleasant consequences that occurred, it will, of course, be quite difficult for them to prove their case.

It will be necessary to examine the regulatory regulation of the powers of the Central Bank and prove the incorrectness of its actions; this will be extremely difficult for the plaintiffs.”

However, when weighing the parties’ arguments, the court will most likely focus not only on financial and legal arguments, believes Anastasia Kayukova, project manager at the Vegas Lex law firm: “I think that, among other things, the court will take into account risks from the point of view of public policy, so that the authorities are not overwhelmed with similar claims.

Because by opening this Pandora’s box, satisfying the plaintiffs’ demands, they will give rise to a much larger number of lawsuits and volume of demands than are currently stated. The court will simply treat this with caution and take into account the risks of public policy when considering the objectivity of the Central Bank’s actions.”

Now, as part of a class action lawsuit against the Central Bank in connection with the record drop in the domestic stock market in 2022 (it collapsed by 33%), 23 people are acting, five more are involved in the case as interested parties, RBC clarifies. The next meeting of the Arbitration Court is scheduled for January 26, 2024.

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Svetlana Belova