The dividend policy of business entities and the analogy of law

Abstract

Author discovers uncertainty that generates ambiguous administrative and judicial law enforcement on the issue related to the limits of business entity freedom in the creation and implementation of dividend policy. Importance of such insufficiently clearly regulated by corporate legislation aspects of the dividend policy as the scope of corporation's powers and limitations in determining frequency of making decisions on dividend payments and timing of the actual distribution of profits among the corporation's participants is shown. Special relevance of the doctrinal study and regulatory clarification of the relevant legal parameters of the dividend policy of domestic corporations is associated by the author with the need to overcome the negative consequences of the sanctions impact of unfriendly foreign states. The presented author's approach is aimed at ensuring greater variability of corporate and legal interaction and increasing the efficiency of business entities. Special technical and legal tools were used in the study, including the method of analogy, as well as civilistic means of analysis and synthesis, comparison and generalization. The idea of the possibility and practicability of flexible negotiation of this uncertainty based on the normative construction of the analogy of law, on the basis of the general principles and meaning of civil legislation, as well as through the analogical use of explanations on understanding of the imperativeness and optionality of legal norms contained in the Resolution of the Russian Federation Supreme Arbitration Court Plenum dated March 14, 2014 No. 16 «On freedom of contract and its limits» is argued. As a result, conceptual admissibility of «nonmonotonic» dividend accruals, not linked to calendar quarters has been proved, as well as the possibility of large delays in the actual payment of declared dividends in comparison with the periods pre-established by norms. Main conditions for the implementation of such a measure of freedom in determining dividend policy are identified, namely its focus on achieving a balance of corporate interests and availability of an actually generated net profit for a business entity.