Miller Magazine Issue: 138 June 2021

81 INTERVIEW MILLER / june 2021 The most difficult challenge for us as legal business is main- taining the required speed and quality of services, with regards to the growing demand and active market expansion. This re- quired us to expand the staff up to 60 people in the Odessa office, to engage experts with a wide variety of backgrounds and to integrate them into the company system. For example, our group of English lawyers is constantly expanding, and we mark their level as the highest in Black Sea Region. What else does cause such difficulties? Another difficulty, that we have not faced so often before, is the conflict of interests. The number of clients from the agricultur- al sector has become so large that several times we had to put clients before a choice: either we reject both of them or we are looking for a mutually beneficial solution. Fortunately, a solution was found: both clients managed to preserve normal business relations and even strengthened their business contacts – ev- eryone got to benefit from it. And what about clients in Europe or in Asia? How dif- ficult is it to fix communications abroad, are there local specifications? After joining the WTO, many new opportunities have opened up for Ukraine. In particular, it was facilitated by re- form of the Ukrainian internal processes. Ukraine burst into the agricultural market in China, Asia, and now is planning to enter the African market. We can be useful to our clients due to our network in Black Sea Region and associated offices. There is much more cooperation with our offices in Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania. In Europe, we often engage Ital- ian and Spanish offices, which very quickly find a common language with the Ukrainian grain buyers, before disputes turn into a hot phase of the conflict. Chinese and Indian colleagues more often assist in salvage of container cargo stuck in ports. This year we opened a Chi- na desk to bring new content to our cooperation in China. If you try to rank the most often problems of Ukrainian traders... First, it will be quality and settlement of all types of claims in this regard under English law. For example, issues of organic products, pesticides, veterinary and phytosanitary history, etc. This is a very painful topic for Ukrainian traders. Therefore, first of all, they should know the legislation of the EU, Asian and African countries, as amended from time to time, in particu- lar, with regards to the freight cost. After all, even one vessel, not being accepted by the buyer in terms of quality, can sig- nificantly complicate the trader’s life, freeze finances or even cause serious losses. Meantime, the most interesting markets are usually associated with quality issues, and it is extremely tempting to be able to cooperate with them. Second, there are financial and banking problems. Col- leagues from our associated offices in Cyprus, Switzerland, Poland often help our clients here. They have to pull out cli- ents’ funds from weak banks or unfreeze costs on accounts due to the fact that transactions or activities of the client’s company seemed suspicious to the bank or to law enforce- ment agencies. Further, there are issues related to law enforcement agen- cies, inspections, arrests, blocking goods at terminals, which have become significantly less, but it is too early to relax. Some traditional problems regarding cargo volume or de- lays in payments cannot be disregarded either. In general, there is enough work. We hope, it will be enough for our century, because we always wish only pros- perity for agribusiness. Because the prosperity of Ukraine depends thereon. I am sure, we will live here for 25 years more.