Arik Aslanyan

Fieldfisher

When Arik Aslanyan joined Fieldfisher’s newly launched Russia and CIS group in 2008, the practice comprised four partners and grossed a revenue of around £3m. Fast forward to today, and Aslanyan has become one of the firm’s top billers, helming a team of over 65 (25 of whom speak Russian) that in the last financial year generated a total of £18m.

His method? Aslanyan hired and trained specialists tackling a geographical niche of region-specific work largely untapped by the competition, sparking mandates for various practices, while his philosophy of being a “family lawyer” to high net-worth local clients, guiding them on multiple legal needs over a number of years, inspired him to develop a training contract tailor made for his own practice.

Aslanyan is advising Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoisky in a $1.9bn claim by PrivatBank seeking compensation for the alleged misapplication of the bank’s assets. Kolomoisky founded PrivatBank in the early 1990s, which served approximately half the country’s population. In 2016, the bank was nationalised, with allegations being made against Kolomoisky and other defendants of fraudulent misappropriation.

Aslanyan also represented one of four defendants in a claim brought by Russian state-owned oil giant PJSC Tatneft for over $368m (£283m) of oil payments.