Sofiya Zhylkaidarova
Managing Partner
Background
Sofiya graduated with honors from the Kazakh State National University named after Al-Farabi, faculty of Law, Bachelor of Laws, with further Master decree from the same University. She participated in number of trainings and workshops on legal and business skills including specific oil and gas and mining trainings, had work practical experience in local law firm, international law firm, also worked as a legal advisor in an international oil and gas company. Sofiya joined the firm in her role in 2007.Practice Areas
Employment and Labour, Tax, Commercial, Corporate.Experience
Sofiya has advised numerous international oil and gas companies on various issues of sub-surface use for more than 12 years including on strategic acquisitions, whether by assignment, takeover or other means. Sofiya has a varied client base, including a number of listed clients. She has participated in drafting number of regulations related to the employment and labour issues, oil and gas, mining and tax matters. Sofiya has also particular focus on the sub-surface use taxation including transfer pricing and international taxation; she has been advising in major M&A transactions. Clients highly valuate her in being not only theoretically strong but also having strong experience in commercial issues and dealing with the officials and being creative in all disputed issues and optimizations. Corporate issues including optimization business are also one of her key and basic practices.In 2010-2011 Sofiya had several tax litigations including successful representation of two international E&P companies in their court claims against tax authorities on PSAs’ stability matters.
She has number of publications on issues related to the oil and gas problematic issues and has several speeches in Oil and Gas and related conferences.
Sofiya participated in several governmental working groups for development of the important legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan. She is an arbitrator of a number of the Kazakhstan and international arbitration courts and member of the International Bar Association (IBA), Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN) and vice president of the Kazakhstan Petroleum Lawyers Association (KPLA).
She is fluent in English, Kazakh and Russian.Mobile: +7 701 722 32 81
ssz@signumlaw.com