Ukrnafta, a major oil and gas company in Ukraine, is preparing for a corporate management overhaul during which it will make changes at top posts.
The British chairman of the executive board of the company Mark Rollins is expected to leave his position on April 30, 2019 according to a post on Ukrnafta’s website.
According to the post, Oleg Gez, Ukrnafta’s deputy executive board chairman, will be acting chairman starting from May 1, 2019. Gez will stay in office until the newly elected supervisory board elects the fully fledged chairperson of Ukrnafta’s executive board.
Ukrnafta has been a byword for opaque management for years – while the state remains its major shareholder, actual control is exercised by a group of minority shareholders representing Privat Group, controlled by oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky and his business partners.
An extraordinary meeting of the company scheduled for March 28, 2019, will mostly cover “issues of a corporate management overhaul, such as the appointment of independent directors, who will constitute a majority of the supervisory board,” Ukrnafta’s head of corporate communications Roman Ilto told the Kyiv Post.
As the company has a history of disputes among its shareholders, having a large proportion of independent directors in the supervisory board should dampen down conflicts of interests, Ilto added.
In accordance with revised corporate management requirements, it will be up to the newly elected supervisory board to appoint the chairman of the executive board.
In the recent years Ukraine has been trying to upgrade its corporate management legislation, says associate Pavlo Oliynyk of law firm Engarde. The country’s parliament has passed a new law on limited liabilities companies and introduced amendments to its law on shareholding companies.
The amendments to the law on shareholding companies bring corporate governance in Ukraine into accord with the best world and European practices, Oliynyk adds. These include the squeeze-out and sell-out procedures now in effect in Ukraine.
Such procedures protect the rights of minority shareholders, while minority shareholders are prevented from usurping their powers.
