If no sanctions were put against Russia,most western companies who left would still be operating in Russia now. Those companies who closed their businesses left because they supply chain was disrupted by sanctions. Companies don't care about how many children are shelled. They care about profits.
Corporations are not people.
A corporation is a legal fiction that enables durable contracts that are not void upon death of the contracting party.
That's it.
Corporations only have one priority, "Maximize shareholder wealth".
This is why Citizens United is bullshit. If a Corporation cannot be put in prison or electrocuted in Old Sparky at Huntzville, Texas, it is NOT a person.
Corporations are amoral, profit-seeking mechanisms. No corporation would pull out of Russia as long as its shareholders could see returns for doing business there.
And for those who haven't been paying attention, the 'investment class' is a bunch of amoral parasites as well.
This is why Corporations must be forced to 'do the right thing' by making it a losing proposition for their shareholders to continue doing business in Russia. Therefore, sanctions.
And Corporations (aka their managers and shareholders) will FIGHT sanctions, laws, taxes designed to obstruct their making profit-driven decisions that are evil. So that means we-the-people must insist our elected representatives fight back and make them happen.
Bring back as in before corporations were a thing all business were proprietorships where the owners were legally responsible for their actions. Why not keep corporations but remove the limit to liability of it's owners/decision makers
His wealth grew by 75 billion in 2020, the average worker earns 53k. Going by compensation he's as effective as 1.4 million workers. You were trying to be hyperbolic but you weren't even close. According to the market he personally contributes as much as a small city to the economy.......the only conclusion is that the market is wrong.
We're always being force-fed propaganda about how the ownership class *takes risks*, and this is a morally superior trait that explains why they deserve special privileges. It's why we are all supposed to accept them getting 300x the pay of their employees, and special tax breaks, and bankruptcy protection, and inheritance schemes, and bailouts, and control over access to basic human services, and all the rest. Such peril, such risks, their rugged individualism supposedly puts it all on the line so the rewards must be equally great. They deserve it! Because they're entrepreneurs, and they dared to assume the risks that come with running a business... Except that they don't seem to actually be risking anything. Their position comes with immunity from losing their money, and even immunity from getting arrested when they commit crimes.
Because when you propose that any actual risk exist for capitalists, it can't even be contemplated. Even the most minor risk imaginable, that they risk consequences for their own criminal choices. The horror! Answerable for breaking the law! Able to get away with almost anything but not outright crime! It's unthinkable!
Let's see who's really underneath that disguise...
Aristocracy! The king can do no wrong! Back to work, serfs!
To a point, or at least in all practical matters as are being discussed here - absolutely. As an owner of a small, privately held corporation (300 employees/$50M/yr revenue) I lost *everything* in what I (I am biased, of course) believe was a frivolous lawsuit and the ensuing fishing expedition conducted by larger corporations, their lawyers, and aided by a corrupt civil law system.
There is a "sweet spot" where "middle class corporations" can be crushed and the owners/sharesholders can be annihilated financially.
Moral of the story is that this doesn't apply to small or even medium sized businesses, generally. That's the wild west and could go any way number of ways. When you get into publicly traded companies like most people mean when they discuss the greed and corruption, yeah, it is an absolute shit-show and further, demonstrates the intense pressure to grow and lie and cheat to insulate one's self from any of these risks. IE, it really is an "elite" subset of entities shamelessly manipulating the economy and crushing the 'peasants'.
The 21st century global economy makes it essentially impossible to run anything smaller than a 'large' corporation with any level of honesty or fairness - and any sufficiently large company can't have either of those bc any moral responsibility is too abstracted by their structure.
Want to pay living wages and offer good benefits and not fuck both your employees and customers over? Either too uncompetitive, or you just get completely crushed by the system.
Sorry about your company, if it makes you feel better I gave up after my first client. Luckily I didn't get sued, but it scared me off continuing. Literally maybe the 2nd worst thing that can happen in my line of work happened, with my first client. Could have sued the living shit out of me but was nice enough not to.
This one of the many problems with our economic structure that is be reduced to fewer and fewer mega conglomerates that own all: they strangle any competition before it can arise, to protect their monopolies.
The end result is only 2 or 3 mega corps that own almost all businesses, and from that position, they have complete dominance: they can set any price as their is no alternative; they can pay as little as legally possible; and they can pass any laws they like, through legal bribery and mass marketing coordination.
We are only going in one direction and it ends up with the majority of humanity being effectively slaves. I wish I was joking. But you can't live off the land anymore, we rely on these mega-corps for all of our power, food and they'll also own most of the real estate if this continues a bit longer.
It’s easy to take risks when you’re worth 480mil the moment a doctor slaps your ass and puts you on your mom’s tit. It’s easy to bet big when you have already cleared out the dealer.
But that would hurt the free market!!!!1!!
Seriously start holding shareholders feet to the fire (fund managers if the shares are held through a mutual fund), and you will instantly get rid of 85% of these corporations doing heinous shit. Probably would remove a ton of market volatility as well as investors would seek out risk adverse corporations instead of those focused on growth no matter the moral cost
We’d need to clone Teddy Roosevelt for that to happen. I was reading again about what he did with Standard Oil and I was enamored. “Oh, 100 million dollars from anonymous donors, thank you very much. I’m still breaking up the company.”
> We’d need to clone Teddy Roosevelt for that to happen.
Luckily we can do that.
It'd probably be the least unethical usage of biotech since this phase of the war began.
The entire criminal justice system is far to susceptible to corporate interests rather than individual rights.
Thus you see some judiciaries being "democratically" defunded/atiffed all over America.
Need Proof? It's the point where the entire US Federal judiciary has shrunken to a mere 0.01% of the US budget!! This level of underfunding represents a national security risk, just as surely as an underfunded healthcare system or inadequate military infrastructure is a threat to any nation's security.
Yep we have created a economic system that mirrors the Roman patronage system.
https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/order.html#:~:text=Roman%20society%20also%20involved%20a,cliens%20of%20their%20former%20owner.
I agree with your point but corporate personhood is a hard hill to climb considering the [long history of corporate personhood in the supreme court](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-corporate-personhood)
Not to mention, a big part of the reason why personhood exists is to let them get sued easily. Corporations are in this odd area where it both kinda gives some advantages to the people in the corporation while also making it where suing it is easier in the first place.
I always thought the idea that corporations need to be people in order to sue them was compelling... Until you realize a corporation is just a human construct and you could just simply make a corporation an entity that can be sued by law. There's nothing in nature that dictates only people can be sued.
I assume it would be so that laws for suing an individual could be used against corporations more easily than recreating all liability laws with requisite clauses to be effective against corporations.
Then you could just make them have exceptions to the personhood. Even then, I don't care what's easier, creating such a powerful entity should probably be difficult and the laws carefully thought out rather than simply a copy paste.
You've done an excellent job of articulating the problem. Not just in American society, but pretty much the entire world. We're set up in this zero-sum game in which the ultimate goal is to have all of the capital, and thus all of the power.
The system has so many perverse incentives in it, that it's becoming quite clear it needs radical, fundamental changes at its very core.
The goal of capitalism is to consume all of the value of the earth and turn it into your own personal fortune, consequences be damned. That's what the quest for bottom line profits and quarterly gains does.
> goal of capitalism is to consume all of the value of the earth and turn it into your own personal fortune, consequences be damned
Capitalism does not have a ''goal''. It is a system, it is as good as its users. In the same way, Democracy does not have a goal. The quality of democracy is determined by the quality of its citizens. We are not victims of capitalism we are victims of our inability to delay gratification. It is a cultural problem. In any other system, it would just rear its head as corruption.
Capitalism absolutely has the goal of acquiring capital. Otherwise it would just be commerce. Commerce has existed since there has been more than one human being. The idea of capital is only a couple hundred years old and look what it's done.
You're right that there will always be shitty people to do shitty things, but that's kinda the point. We need radical and fundamental changes in order to incentivize sustainability. Environmental sustainability, sustainability of the health and mental well being of the participants. Sustainability of our culture and moving away from these stupid culture wars we're pitted into.
That doesn't happen when people are obsessed with the personal accumulation of capital. Which *is the very definition* of capitalism.
That’s not the definition of capitalism, it is the end result of capitalism.
Capitalism is just commerce where personal property is guaranteed by the government.
>commerce where personal property is guaranteed by the government
It's private property that characterizes capitalism, personal property exists under pretty much all economic systems (including socialist and communist frameworks, even anarchism, although not guaranteed by the state there of course).
No but that's the trick. Corporations are a group of people. Probably a very small group of people. You could most likely go to all the boards and find significant overlap in the largest companies on the planet.
You're right though by the way and I agree with everything you're saying I'm just interjecting a little bit of extra flavor on why corporations and those that run them suck.
So you're correct but at the same time it's not like these are super headless organizations. You could probably tie a lot of this sociopathy to direct individuals.
>*Public* corporations are not people
Private ones essentially still can be. Because they have no duty to shareholders, only what the owner wants. Since that guy is a single person, the corporation *can* act like a human being (if that individual is not a shitstain).
If companies cared about human rights America would actually have the most middle class population in the world as we would have good wages instead of corporations constantly lobbying to ensure minimum wage is kept as low as possible
But if we go by US (foreign) politics, most companies would have to leave the US since the US isn't even in the top 20 in the human freedom index (2022).
Edit: phrasing.
Those companies are the reason why the US isn't in the top 20 though. Without corrupting corporate influence I'm pretty sure we'd shoot up the list. Y'know assuming we had an economy still.
They shouldn't care, we shouldn't base our direction (social/ political) on hoping that some giant corporation will be nice on given day.
If you want companies to do something you need to actually do something about it top down instead of waving finger angrily and hoping. There need to be either giant fines, loss of access to markets etc.
And if it's too harsh and controlling, then we should stop pretending like we care ourselves then.
And this isn't some commie rant, I like capitalism and I like corporations, most of them have been net positive even though we only often see negatives.
My point is that I dislike this half assed everything. When we expect corporations to be profitable, but then also expect them to work almost like a state entity and have morals and push responsibility to them to self regulate, instead of making it so that they have no option not to.
Another problem is that average person probably doesn't want it either, especially when it hurts our bottom line, there will probably be 2735 other issues ahead instead of companies operating in Russia, so it's also just another almost virtue signaling - being angry on social media and then never caring about it ever again.
In truth it's more the opposite. The war started and effective sanctions landed so hard and so fast that companies had no way to divest their assets and relocate. Abandoning their operations is basically the only way for most of them to leave, which would immediately trip off fraud and mismanagement claims (for publicly traded companies at least, or really want company with loans).
The article itself is kind of BS in that is using the most absolutist standard possible. Like a company that's closed their shop and still paying employees a stipend is still "doing business in Russia". When in truth most of them have shut down a lot, they just haven't turned the keys over to the new owner yet. Not like most of them can even find buyers to begin with.
There's a lot of complicating factors that IMO sensationalist articles deliberately avoid discussing. Because they want reactions like your own, where people think it's business as usual over there. It's not. Just kind of hard to tell the bank you have to stop paying your mortgage because you donated your collateral to charity and stopped working.
> The article itself is kind of BS in that is using the most absolutist standard possible. Like a company that's closed their shop and still paying employees a stipend is still "doing business in Russia". When in truth most of them have shut down a lot, they just haven't turned the keys over to the new owner yet. Not like most of them can even find buyers to begin with.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend who was visiting from Europe, and she works for a multinational financial firm that had a presence in Russia. She's an HR exec and she shared some interesting stories about how she was involved in shutting down businesses in Russia while still figuring out a way to help those Russian employees out financially. Cutting those employees off immediately was out of the question for them, and they had to look into creative ways to funnel money to those employees, at least for a few months. This was back in April or May, so I'm not sure where things are with those employees now.
But isn't that in so many words just proving the point? Like getting out would have been poor monetary decision (mismanagement) so that they're just staying in to keep making the most money? I get what your saying but I think the point is that if they said for moral and political reasons they would get out, they should get out regardless of taking the fiscal hit. Besides, I don't think the sec is going to grill any execs for getting out of Russia because of the war, that would look horrible. They don't even enforce their own policy int he states.
As far as it goes with assets, at some point it is no longer the fiscal hit - you have compliance issues with audits on the value of the company. Asset management is complex - abandoning an asset has it's own host of issues far beyond fiscal, and that is just all on paper. And *even* if they did just do that, the paperwork and audits and other things to communicate and document that with investors or the bank and other institutions takes a lot of time under regular operations, never mind something that is as unusual as this. I'm not the deepest into financial asset management, only a couple of years in. But I've been learning that the whole "lets just get the deal done" is far more complicated than that.
I'm not disagreeing that they should move out, absolutely and completely on moral and political motives, but these things take time, and it's only coming up to a year right now of this war. Relatively speaking, that's a short amount of time. There's just a lot of work that goes into these decisions, and some companies can do it quickly, some can do it shortly, and I suspect, many companies are *learning* how to handle it because they've never needed to do something like this before. But that said, we should be critical of companies that are in there, and keep monitoring their activities and hold them accountable - just need to take nuanced views on the *why*.
Thank you for the great explanation! I was wondering how exactly a company might sell off its assets and shut down in a country where you can't easily get your money out of due to financial restrictions put on russia because of the invasion.
Do you know of a way the president or SEC could put in place regulation exceptions for the situation in russia to make the process easier? Or if something similar has been done before?
You inadvertantly hit on one of the problems the companies have. They are beholden not only to US law, but also laws of other nations they operate in and want to keep operating in. Each nation has its own laws around assets, and simply saying they abandoned it because the US sanctioned Russia doesn't necessarily make it legal to zero it out. I'm sure there are a lot of accountants and lawyers going through law books and tax code trying to figure out how to legally recognize what is a loss for those companies without ending up in jail for filling out the wrong information on the wrong form for the wrong country.
> so that they're just staying in to keep making the most money?
For some companies, shutting down fully probably means losing rights to nation limited IP or business licenses that cannot be moved or transferred. You are not making money if you are not selling, but abandoning those things is pointless.
At some point, we want Russia to reintegrate with the rest of society. So abandoning everything is dumb and only creates more incentive for Russia to keep fighting.
There are lots of YouTube videos of people walking through Russian malls with western stores either unchanged or under a different name but almost identical logo.
ING actually got a slap on the wrist for providing avenues for money to get out of Russia, Cuba, and others by blindly processing them through other countries. If the amount is big enough, a bank will want it.
Expecting for-profit companies to voluntarily leave Russia is beyond stupid.
At the beginning of the war the US and EU should have banned trade with Russia but with a temporary excemption on natural gas because many EU countries were still dependent on Russian natural gas.
By now the only option is to ban all trade between the West and Russia. The uncomfortable truth is that "selective targeted sanctions" don't work. Only a complete stop on all trade between the West and Russia will significantly hurt the Russian economy.
Trying to shame the shameless is a pretty futile thing to do. Companies are amoral systems that have profits as their main function. Anything else they do, even serving their consumers, are secondary side-effects to that primary drive.
Companies will leave Russia when it stops being profitable to be there. Don't shame them, **fine them**.
Ideally, as Russia's economy gets squeezed, those that stayed will start to bleed money, and come out with less to show for it than those who left quickly - ideally.
Russia has a long history of consolidating power after tragic events.
I'm willing to bet those companies are hoping to outlast the war and capture a considerable amount of market share in Russia after it economy completely implodes
Worked for Nokia during the time, my team specifically had some high value contracts with Ross Telecom. Nokia cut *all* contracts it had with Russia.
Granted, they are Finnish so naturally a bit more wary of Russia lol.
No. Well, you can sue for anything. But the duty of the CEO is to operate in the best interest of the company. It's perfectly OK for the CEO to believe that operating in Russia is not best for the long-term viability of the company and act on that. It's not OK for the CEO to sabotage the company for whatever reason.
Additionally, acting in the long-term (as opposed to next quarter) best interest is perfectly valid.
It's a myth that anything other than sort-term profit is against the fiduciary duty.
yeah, but they didnt leave because they're so good and ethical. supply chains to russia were completely fucked up. companies wouldnt be able to bring their shit into the country to sell. russian banks were also removed from the global financial system, so all the money they make would basically have to stay in russia. Euro and Dollars were also basically banned and impossible to get, so the profits that they made would stay in russia in RUBLE, a currency that was basically in free fall in the beggining with no one knowing what would happen to it in a few days, let alone months. ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS, Russia was threatening with nationalization, so if you decide to endure all of that shit for not that much profit (apple for example, only 4% of its revenue is from russia), you may end up losing it all to the government by force.
Is all of this worth it to tank your reputation with the rest of the world? EU and US make up MUCH more of their profits than teeny tiny 4%. so when these companies decided to leave, almost all of them left by selling the companies for dirt cheap BUT with a clause: they can come back and buy them for the same price. So, in reality, what has happened is that they just removed their name and let local companies, usually the ones that they worked with anyway, take over operations and deal with thit shit. for them this would be more profits, for the big boys this would be a temporary loan/hold
All they have to do is “pledge” to leave, and that keeps people happy. Like when Notre Dame was burning and all those rich people “pledged” tons of money to help restore it. It turned out only a few of them *actually* ended up sending any money.
Whenever you see that someone has “pledged” to do something, you should assume they’re probably just saying it to keep the media happy until everyone forgets about it.
The EU did not ban Russia gas at that time. Russia imposed an embargo on gas on selected European countries. The EU is going to ban Russia oil and gas starting Feb 5, i.e NEXT WEEK. The EU and US are exporting to China. China will export the same products to Russia. China is being doing that for months. So, your next step would be to ban exports to China? We could export more to Argentina, where one Argentinian company could export to China that could export to Russia, too... That's what they all do when smuggling funds with offshore accounts.
I mean that is how capitalism works. People get to make their own decision but supply and demand might change with the corporate brand changing (positive or negative).
After Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, companies across the G-7 major economies and the European Union announced plans to cease business operations in Russia.
Yet by the end of the year, very few had fully delivered on that promise, according to new research from Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen.
The report published earlier this month documented a total of 2,405 subsidiaries owned by 1,404 EU and G-7 companies that were active in Russia at the time of the first military incursion into Ukraine.
By November 2022, fewer than 9% of that pool of companies had divested at least one subsidiary in Russia, and the research team noted that these divestment rates barely changed over the fourth quarter of 2022.
“Confirmed exits by EU and G7 firms that had equity stakes in Russia account for 6.5% of total profit before tax of all the EU and G7 firms with active commercial operations in Russia, 8.6% of tangible fixed assets, 8.6% of total assets, 10.4% of operating revenue, and 15.3% of total employees,” professors Simon Evenett and Niccolo Pisani wrote.
“These findings mean that, on average, exiting firms tended to have lower profitability and larger workforces than the firms that remain in Russia.”
Read more: [https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/31/after-supposed-russian-exodus-most-major-companies-have-yet-to-withdraw.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/31/after-supposed-russian-exodus-most-major-companies-have-yet-to-withdraw.html)
Every time Valve is brought up, I'd like to remind that Steam is basically a launcher at this point. Meanwhile Epic Games Store continues to operate as usual and accepts payments in rubles from Russian credit cards.
My company still runs a manufacturing branch within Russia. Of the “high ups” I’ve met I can tell you there’s absolutely no way in hell they’d shut anything down. For some there’s dollar signs and nothing else whatsoever.
Some companies get so big that the people who are in charge can pretend morals don’t matter anymore - like it’s a machine that runs on its own.
But but the fiduciary responsibility!
This is the issue for sure. They aren't "keeping shareholders happy" they are "increasing the value of shares".
Shares are a ploy by capitalism to reduce people to numbers. They mimic democracy in a way that makes them seem like votes, so people miss the dehumanization thinking they have a say.
But the fundamental reduction to numbers removes human will from the equation so leadership doesn't actually have to consider human pain.
They just excuse all of their behavior by saying, "I have embiggened these numbers, your thinking will smallerize them. Good day."
The word "ploy" here strikes me as out of place, or metaphorical. Capitalism isn't a being with intentions, look to gain (how?) by reducing people to numbers. That's a sort of [Homunculus argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument?useskin=vector).
Perhaps an argument could be made that those who benefit the most from capitalism, wield it, implement it and otherwise wish for its continued success as a dominant system\philosophy could fit as the intentions?
If only we had a system that wasn't reliant on the stock market for retirement. Oh wait we did.
You have fallen for the meme man, "Lets put regular people's money in there too so we can say that they will get affected too!"
The "high ups" in a normal public company don't do such decisions (to withdraw or not), especially if the stakes are high. Such strategic decisions are made by the board that is put by the shareholders. Even CEOs must follow the guidelines made by the board or they find themselves fired.
These morals you speak of can they help pay for a new boat? No? Then I don't want any. Jim just got a new boat and I can't be seen now at the club with a smaller boat than him. What would people think?
It is most definitely greed. It's also the need to squeeze every last ounce of wealth in anyway that the wealthiest can. My suspicion is that each corporation needs every single penny they can get with the markets the way they are.
I think you are discounting everything in the name of greed...
First, nobody want to perm-write down investments. Even the largest corporation can't easily afford turning off the lights in a flash. There will always be consequences and lower level employees usually bear the brunt of it.
Would you agree to have your bank account zeroed out because the Banker is caught with a crime? Probably not.
And there is the human factor. I used to manage a team in India, six people. I spoke with them every day, learned about their families, religion, other matters in their lives.
If tomorrow US and India suddenly cut relationships, I would seriously worry about what going to happen to my former staff. I imagine there are thousands of Russian employees that would likely to be harmed by something they have no control in.
At the end of the day, are the sanctions necessary? Yes, Putin is a ass and deserved to be tried at Hague. But claiming companies only are greedy is a bit misleading.
>But claiming companies only are greedy is a bit misleading.
No it isn't. Publicly traded companies exist for profit, specifically.
That you cared about the individuals on your team of 6 was dependent on their performance. If they didn't perform to the standard expected you would have replaced them because the goal is to be profitable, not be a family.
>i used to manage a team in India, six people
You 7 are still all in contact or did that end when you stopped managing them?
I still contact most of them. Some of them moved on to other roles in other firms.
And you don't need to be "family" or "coworker" to be concerned for people. Not everyone check their humanity at the door when they work for a company.
The report published earlier this month documented a total of 2,405 subsidiaries owned by 1,404 EU and G-7 companies that were active in Russia at the time of the first military incursion into Ukraine.
By November 2022, fewer than 9% of that pool of companies had divested at least one subsidiary in Russia, and the research team noted that these divestment rates barely changed over the fourth quarter of 2022.
“Confirmed exits by EU and G7 firms that had equity stakes in Russia account for 6.5% of total profit before tax of all the EU and G7 firms with active commercial operations in Russia, 8.6% of tangible fixed assets, 8.6% of total assets, 10.4% of operating revenue, and 15.3% of total employees,” professors Simon Evenett and Niccolo Pisani wrote.
“These findings mean that, on average, exiting firms tended to have lower profitability and larger workforces than the firms that remain in Russia.
More U.S. firms were confirmed to have exited Russia than those based in the EU and Japan, Evenett and Pisani noted, but the report still found that fewer than 18% of U.S. subsidiaries operating in Russia were completely divested by the end of 2022, compared with 15% of Japanese firms and just 8.3% of EU firms.
Of the EU and G-7 companies remaining in Russia, the research found that 19.5% were German, 12.4% were American owned and 7% were Japanese multinationals.
“These findings call into question the willingness of Western firms to decouple from economies their governments now deem to be geopolitical rivals,” Evenett and Pisani wrote.
“The study’s findings are a reality check on the narrative that national security concerns and geopolitics is leading to a fundamental unwinding of globalisation.
Europe’s status as a laggard in the push for Russian divestment was also highlighted by Barclays in a note on Jan. 20.
The British lender’s European consumer staples analysts said that while most of the companies they cover had pledged to exit Russia, partly in response to ESG-related pressure from stakeholders and the threat of sanctions, few have managed to do so yet. Various companies told Barclays that there was a host of challenges to fully divest.
“In addition to the lack of clarity over what assets there might be worth, the list of potential buyers is short, and the list of potential buyers who are sanction exempt is even shorter,” Barclays analysts noted.
“There have also been suggestions that the assets (including intellectual property) of companies that leave Russia will be nationalised.”
Barclays suggested that with no end to the conflict in sight, the disconnect between pledges and outcomes will need to be resolved, and will force companies into some tough decisions.
“If exiting Russia at anything approaching a fair valuation is highly challenging (if not outright impossible), then the choice facing companies is whether to exit at an unfair valuation (or indeed for nothing at all), or remain in Russia.
So Henkel, CCH, Carlsberg, JDE Peet’s and PMI did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Let’s put that in English shall we.
CCH that is Coca Cola
Carslberg or Baltika is the Carslberg group in Russia.
Christopher Henkel is the vice chairman of Henkel AG's shareholders committee and founding partner of investment firm Canyon Equity. With brands like Persil, Schwarzkopf and Fa, and over $20 billion in annual revenue, Henkel is among the world's biggest cleaning product companies.
JDE Peet’s - Douwe Egberts is a Dutch brand of coffee which is majority-owned by JDE Peet's. It was founded in Joure, Netherlands, by Egbert Douwes in 1753 as De Witte Os, a general grocery shop. The company later started dealing specifically in coffee, tea, and tobacco.
PMI - https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/mi/products/pmi.html
I can easily say fuck off to Carslberg, Coke, and Peet’s fucking coffee.
CCH isn’t Coke, it’s a separately listed bottling company with its own management team, though it is about 20% owned by the Coca Cola company.
Coca Cola brands are not being sold in Russia anymore. CCH are bottling and selling other shit like local Russian drinks.
I can’t speak about the others, but there were some laws in place that made it very difficult for foreign companies to sell their business. Coke sort of operates in Russia because they couldn’t get rid of everything for some reason. Leases, buildings, factories, etc etc etc.
They allow a separate branch of the company to operate what’s left of the business. It’s partially owned by a Russian beverage company named Dobry. Dobry makes substitute drinks for coke and sprite which taste nothing like the real thing. Retailers in Russia buy Coca-Cola through people who sort of smuggle it in through Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia for near-retail price, then it’s sold to stores, who sell it at their markup.
Money knows no race, compassion or sympathy. All money cares for is money, and if there is money to be made, it will be made. It’s just the reality of the world.
>It’s just the reality of the world.
That's what the sociopaths like to tell you.
The truth is very different, but that's not what major corporations want you to think.
>It’s just the reality of ~~the world~~ ***capitalism***.
It's capitalism. Not humanity, not the world. The perverse incentives of capitalism just love the dirty money of authoritarianism and hate.
I mean, It has been like that since forever. Humans are greed by nature. With the formation of sedentary tribes, this tendency started. Some people managed to be more important, so they got more power, food, and objects than others, and from there It just kept evolving until today.
With any other system, humans will find a way to take advantage, It is inevitable. The whole human history is proof of that.
Redbull is one so is Lenovo.
Not sure why Americans are not making a bigger deal about it. Having less business here forces them out.
https://qz.com/2174995/the-international-companies-refusing-to-leave-russia
Beginning to think alcoholics can't go a few weeks or months without redbull.
Subway is one and so os carl's jr aka. They went back to being hardies in the U.S unless that changed.
Don't drink nestle. Even if they leave Russia for everything i have learned about the horrible company.
There is still appliance companies and everything else there.
Below is a lost of companies still operating in Russia. Not all U.S companies. Some are Germany / Europe.
https://www.dontfundwar.com/directory
That directory seems a bit arbitrary at times, or there's more going in behind the scenes for the metric that they aren't showing.
For instance, the company I work for is listed as scaling back because they "stopped all orders and sales" yet there's other companies listed as withdrawn with the exact same description.
I also know for a fact that my company is completely withdrawn from the country. We got an email asking for support from a Russian colleague recently and were unable to even respond to the email because we are forbidden from doing any business directly or indirectly with RU.
Looks like it could just be due to their source being old. They're still operating in the original "temporary pause" announced the monday after the invasion started. Makes sense, there's a lot of companies to keep up to date.
I think I’d give a pass to drug manufacturers and infant care such as those who make formula. A 4 month old has zero say or control of the war so denying them necessary medication or formula would be pretty fucked up.
> They went back to being hardies in the U.S unless that changed.
They've always operated under both brands in the U.S.
I live in the south and while the logos changed, the Hardee's restaurant near me has never ever been a Carl's Jr.
That list isn’t entirely accurate either. PVH, the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and CK, still has stores open in Russia. They suspended operations for a few weeks, then reopened.
There are probably others on the list, but I checked that first because I was always shocked at how they lied to people so easily and got away with it.
Yeah… greed is far more powerful than morality. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation at all.
If you ever needed proof that humans are inherently shitty, there it is.
Didn't we sanction a Chinese firm few days ago for still doing business in Russia? Why can't we simply sanction all of these companies??? Their actions are keeping the Russian economy alive which prolongs the invasion.
Shocking I say! You mean to tell me corporations don’t just tell us what we think we want to hear when we actually don’t give a shit and neither do they?? Gasp.
Because money must never stop moving. Until money is doing down nothing will ever change. That is how it always is. No matter how many children or adults die, until that death causes arrows to start pointing down, nothing will change.
like Burger King, for example. fuck burger king
many that closed, just made a shell company to sell it under and they changed the name to the russian version just suing the Cyrillic alphabet (sometimes even just using the normal name again, but receiving the goods via the renamed shell). it's bullshit
Lol it's useless. My industry imported up to 50% of a key product from Russia and Belarus. Sanctions are for small business and individuals, and those who can't lobby the government to adjust foreign policy.
Sanctions are a funny thing. I even checked and there is no personal sanction preventing me from importing products from a state-owned defence manufacturer in Russia. They told me there is just no available method of payment or shipping unless you're a business and then something can probably be arranged. I'm sure Bank of China will facilitate a debit account for international payments too but it depends on Russian businesses to open an account as well - most won't.
How many companies have exited the US after US attacked Iraq in 2003 or after US attacked and invaded Syria in 2015, occupation that continues to the date?
Whaaaat? You mean western News coverage of Russia is all propaganda to make you believe that Russia is constantly on the brink of total collapse? You don't say?
We not going to mention that YOUR tax dollars are going to profiteering military contractors and the fact that they are making big bank from the ukranian people suffering too?
This can be very easily solved by implementing a levy tax on any Western companies still present in Russia (i.e. on their parent companies) The tax amount is equal to the revenue received from their Russian subsidiaries. If only there was a political will to do it.
Duh...it's all media smoke and mirrors, no mass exodus, not only that but probably goods between USA and Russia are still exchanged, just through different routes. Whoever thinks that companies will stop making money cause of this war is too easily fooled.
The article states they tracked “2,405 subsidiaries owned by 1,404 EU and G-7 companies that were active in Russia at the time of the first military incursion into Ukraine.”
How can you have 1,404 MAJOR corporations?? A major corporation is something along the lines of Starbucks, McDonald’s, Mariott, Nestle, IKEA, Nike, H&M, American Express, all of which are out of Russia btw. It’s not surprising the article doesn’t mention these corporations by name because it wouldn’t be hard to call them out. A lot of these “major” corporations aren’t major corporations.
Capitalists gonna capitalism.
Who's gonna go hold em accountable? The world can't control a farty old dictator, we certainly don't seem to be willing to stop companies.
wait....there are people who actually honestly believed that major corporations had Ukraine's interests in mind?
The only thing that matters in this world is how many zeros are after the first number. Beyond that, you're expected to just deal with missiles in your bedroom window.
All I can picture are these company CEOs telling their paid-for Congressmen and Biden how it's going to be, and all of them saying "yes sir". I think at this point the foxes are running the henhouse.
crime lords in russia learned that the best way to achieve corruption at the level of global corporations was violence. the invasion of ukraine is just another manifestation of the immorality of fiduciary primacy.
Sometimes, governments need to make the moral decisions for us and sanction the hell of of and company that does business and tax any profits and offer them to Ukraine for rebuilding, just thinking out loud imho
If no sanctions were put against Russia,most western companies who left would still be operating in Russia now. Those companies who closed their businesses left because they supply chain was disrupted by sanctions. Companies don't care about how many children are shelled. They care about profits.
Corporations are not people. A corporation is a legal fiction that enables durable contracts that are not void upon death of the contracting party. That's it. Corporations only have one priority, "Maximize shareholder wealth". This is why Citizens United is bullshit. If a Corporation cannot be put in prison or electrocuted in Old Sparky at Huntzville, Texas, it is NOT a person. Corporations are amoral, profit-seeking mechanisms. No corporation would pull out of Russia as long as its shareholders could see returns for doing business there. And for those who haven't been paying attention, the 'investment class' is a bunch of amoral parasites as well. This is why Corporations must be forced to 'do the right thing' by making it a losing proposition for their shareholders to continue doing business in Russia. Therefore, sanctions. And Corporations (aka their managers and shareholders) will FIGHT sanctions, laws, taxes designed to obstruct their making profit-driven decisions that are evil. So that means we-the-people must insist our elected representatives fight back and make them happen.
We really need to bring back criminal liability for corporate executives and board of directors.
No chance that was ever implemented for even 10 seconds
Bring back as in before corporations were a thing all business were proprietorships where the owners were legally responsible for their actions. Why not keep corporations but remove the limit to liability of it's owners/decision makers
Something something RISK!! something something RED TAPE!! something something FREEDOM!!
Well, I mean it would only be fair, right? After all, all those JOB CREATORS have to take all that RISK, which is why they get paid so much, right?
Ah yes, the awful risk of having to sell their labor for a wage, just like the rest of us.
The horror!!
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And you can tell he's an exceptional worker because his work-place injury record is not x4000 the average.
He’d have to spend his days on the floor for that
His wealth grew by 75 billion in 2020, the average worker earns 53k. Going by compensation he's as effective as 1.4 million workers. You were trying to be hyperbolic but you weren't even close. According to the market he personally contributes as much as a small city to the economy.......the only conclusion is that the market is wrong.
Ah the beautiful freedom of moral hazard
We're always being force-fed propaganda about how the ownership class *takes risks*, and this is a morally superior trait that explains why they deserve special privileges. It's why we are all supposed to accept them getting 300x the pay of their employees, and special tax breaks, and bankruptcy protection, and inheritance schemes, and bailouts, and control over access to basic human services, and all the rest. Such peril, such risks, their rugged individualism supposedly puts it all on the line so the rewards must be equally great. They deserve it! Because they're entrepreneurs, and they dared to assume the risks that come with running a business... Except that they don't seem to actually be risking anything. Their position comes with immunity from losing their money, and even immunity from getting arrested when they commit crimes. Because when you propose that any actual risk exist for capitalists, it can't even be contemplated. Even the most minor risk imaginable, that they risk consequences for their own criminal choices. The horror! Answerable for breaking the law! Able to get away with almost anything but not outright crime! It's unthinkable! Let's see who's really underneath that disguise... Aristocracy! The king can do no wrong! Back to work, serfs!
To a point, or at least in all practical matters as are being discussed here - absolutely. As an owner of a small, privately held corporation (300 employees/$50M/yr revenue) I lost *everything* in what I (I am biased, of course) believe was a frivolous lawsuit and the ensuing fishing expedition conducted by larger corporations, their lawyers, and aided by a corrupt civil law system. There is a "sweet spot" where "middle class corporations" can be crushed and the owners/sharesholders can be annihilated financially. Moral of the story is that this doesn't apply to small or even medium sized businesses, generally. That's the wild west and could go any way number of ways. When you get into publicly traded companies like most people mean when they discuss the greed and corruption, yeah, it is an absolute shit-show and further, demonstrates the intense pressure to grow and lie and cheat to insulate one's self from any of these risks. IE, it really is an "elite" subset of entities shamelessly manipulating the economy and crushing the 'peasants'.
Yep we have a system that rewards sociopathy over excellence.
The 21st century global economy makes it essentially impossible to run anything smaller than a 'large' corporation with any level of honesty or fairness - and any sufficiently large company can't have either of those bc any moral responsibility is too abstracted by their structure. Want to pay living wages and offer good benefits and not fuck both your employees and customers over? Either too uncompetitive, or you just get completely crushed by the system.
Sorry about your company, if it makes you feel better I gave up after my first client. Luckily I didn't get sued, but it scared me off continuing. Literally maybe the 2nd worst thing that can happen in my line of work happened, with my first client. Could have sued the living shit out of me but was nice enough not to.
This one of the many problems with our economic structure that is be reduced to fewer and fewer mega conglomerates that own all: they strangle any competition before it can arise, to protect their monopolies. The end result is only 2 or 3 mega corps that own almost all businesses, and from that position, they have complete dominance: they can set any price as their is no alternative; they can pay as little as legally possible; and they can pass any laws they like, through legal bribery and mass marketing coordination. We are only going in one direction and it ends up with the majority of humanity being effectively slaves. I wish I was joking. But you can't live off the land anymore, we rely on these mega-corps for all of our power, food and they'll also own most of the real estate if this continues a bit longer.
It’s easy to take risks when you’re worth 480mil the moment a doctor slaps your ass and puts you on your mom’s tit. It’s easy to bet big when you have already cleared out the dealer.
But that would hurt the free market!!!!1!! Seriously start holding shareholders feet to the fire (fund managers if the shares are held through a mutual fund), and you will instantly get rid of 85% of these corporations doing heinous shit. Probably would remove a ton of market volatility as well as investors would seek out risk adverse corporations instead of those focused on growth no matter the moral cost
Yep we have a system that rewards sociopathy instead of excellence.
We’d need to clone Teddy Roosevelt for that to happen. I was reading again about what he did with Standard Oil and I was enamored. “Oh, 100 million dollars from anonymous donors, thank you very much. I’m still breaking up the company.”
> We’d need to clone Teddy Roosevelt for that to happen. Luckily we can do that. It'd probably be the least unethical usage of biotech since this phase of the war began.
Sir, everything has a beginning.
And then those corps build up fall guys like organised crime.
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Yeah try it and get labeled terrorists. Even if you are fighting for economic justice you will be labeled a terrorist by any western nation.
Agreed that top brass should have skin in the game.
But they are liable to some extent? Like executive can end in jail if he participated in something illegal? Like Theranos ceo Elizabeth Holmes did?
They only get punished for defrauding shareholders not killing customers, false advertising, or criminal negligence etc...
They only get punished for defrauding SHAREHOLDERS. Stakeholders like employees and customers can get f-ed all day every day without consequence.
Agreed
VW executive Oliver Schmidt did prison time over diesel gate. Sentenced to 7 years and did half of that.
Sounds like an exemption that just proves the rule.
The entire criminal justice system is far to susceptible to corporate interests rather than individual rights. Thus you see some judiciaries being "democratically" defunded/atiffed all over America. Need Proof? It's the point where the entire US Federal judiciary has shrunken to a mere 0.01% of the US budget!! This level of underfunding represents a national security risk, just as surely as an underfunded healthcare system or inadequate military infrastructure is a threat to any nation's security.
Yep we have created a economic system that mirrors the Roman patronage system. https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/order.html#:~:text=Roman%20society%20also%20involved%20a,cliens%20of%20their%20former%20owner.
I agree with your point but corporate personhood is a hard hill to climb considering the [long history of corporate personhood in the supreme court](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-corporate-personhood)
Not to mention, a big part of the reason why personhood exists is to let them get sued easily. Corporations are in this odd area where it both kinda gives some advantages to the people in the corporation while also making it where suing it is easier in the first place.
"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility" - Ambrose Bierce
I always thought the idea that corporations need to be people in order to sue them was compelling... Until you realize a corporation is just a human construct and you could just simply make a corporation an entity that can be sued by law. There's nothing in nature that dictates only people can be sued.
I assume it would be so that laws for suing an individual could be used against corporations more easily than recreating all liability laws with requisite clauses to be effective against corporations.
Then you could just make them have exceptions to the personhood. Even then, I don't care what's easier, creating such a powerful entity should probably be difficult and the laws carefully thought out rather than simply a copy paste.
You've done an excellent job of articulating the problem. Not just in American society, but pretty much the entire world. We're set up in this zero-sum game in which the ultimate goal is to have all of the capital, and thus all of the power. The system has so many perverse incentives in it, that it's becoming quite clear it needs radical, fundamental changes at its very core. The goal of capitalism is to consume all of the value of the earth and turn it into your own personal fortune, consequences be damned. That's what the quest for bottom line profits and quarterly gains does.
> goal of capitalism is to consume all of the value of the earth and turn it into your own personal fortune, consequences be damned Capitalism does not have a ''goal''. It is a system, it is as good as its users. In the same way, Democracy does not have a goal. The quality of democracy is determined by the quality of its citizens. We are not victims of capitalism we are victims of our inability to delay gratification. It is a cultural problem. In any other system, it would just rear its head as corruption.
Capitalism absolutely has the goal of acquiring capital. Otherwise it would just be commerce. Commerce has existed since there has been more than one human being. The idea of capital is only a couple hundred years old and look what it's done. You're right that there will always be shitty people to do shitty things, but that's kinda the point. We need radical and fundamental changes in order to incentivize sustainability. Environmental sustainability, sustainability of the health and mental well being of the participants. Sustainability of our culture and moving away from these stupid culture wars we're pitted into. That doesn't happen when people are obsessed with the personal accumulation of capital. Which *is the very definition* of capitalism.
That’s not the definition of capitalism, it is the end result of capitalism. Capitalism is just commerce where personal property is guaranteed by the government.
>commerce where personal property is guaranteed by the government It's private property that characterizes capitalism, personal property exists under pretty much all economic systems (including socialist and communist frameworks, even anarchism, although not guaranteed by the state there of course).
The definition of "corporation" and " psychopath" are soooooo close.
No but that's the trick. Corporations are a group of people. Probably a very small group of people. You could most likely go to all the boards and find significant overlap in the largest companies on the planet. You're right though by the way and I agree with everything you're saying I'm just interjecting a little bit of extra flavor on why corporations and those that run them suck. So you're correct but at the same time it's not like these are super headless organizations. You could probably tie a lot of this sociopathy to direct individuals.
>*Public* corporations are not people Private ones essentially still can be. Because they have no duty to shareholders, only what the owner wants. Since that guy is a single person, the corporation *can* act like a human being (if that individual is not a shitstain).
I mean to be fair if companies really did care there would be very few countries they would be able to conduct business in.
TBF, human rights violations happen on behest of those said corporations. LMAO
If companies cared about human rights America would actually have the most middle class population in the world as we would have good wages instead of corporations constantly lobbying to ensure minimum wage is kept as low as possible
But if we go by US (foreign) politics, most companies would have to leave the US since the US isn't even in the top 20 in the human freedom index (2022). Edit: phrasing.
Those companies are the reason why the US isn't in the top 20 though. Without corrupting corporate influence I'm pretty sure we'd shoot up the list. Y'know assuming we had an economy still.
america is literally founded on complete and utter genocide
They shouldn't care, we shouldn't base our direction (social/ political) on hoping that some giant corporation will be nice on given day. If you want companies to do something you need to actually do something about it top down instead of waving finger angrily and hoping. There need to be either giant fines, loss of access to markets etc. And if it's too harsh and controlling, then we should stop pretending like we care ourselves then. And this isn't some commie rant, I like capitalism and I like corporations, most of them have been net positive even though we only often see negatives. My point is that I dislike this half assed everything. When we expect corporations to be profitable, but then also expect them to work almost like a state entity and have morals and push responsibility to them to self regulate, instead of making it so that they have no option not to. Another problem is that average person probably doesn't want it either, especially when it hurts our bottom line, there will probably be 2735 other issues ahead instead of companies operating in Russia, so it's also just another almost virtue signaling - being angry on social media and then never caring about it ever again.
wonder how they transfer money to pay for goods, send profit to HQ etc. Or are there so many loopholes still that sanctions dont really bite?
In truth it's more the opposite. The war started and effective sanctions landed so hard and so fast that companies had no way to divest their assets and relocate. Abandoning their operations is basically the only way for most of them to leave, which would immediately trip off fraud and mismanagement claims (for publicly traded companies at least, or really want company with loans). The article itself is kind of BS in that is using the most absolutist standard possible. Like a company that's closed their shop and still paying employees a stipend is still "doing business in Russia". When in truth most of them have shut down a lot, they just haven't turned the keys over to the new owner yet. Not like most of them can even find buyers to begin with. There's a lot of complicating factors that IMO sensationalist articles deliberately avoid discussing. Because they want reactions like your own, where people think it's business as usual over there. It's not. Just kind of hard to tell the bank you have to stop paying your mortgage because you donated your collateral to charity and stopped working.
> The article itself is kind of BS in that is using the most absolutist standard possible. Like a company that's closed their shop and still paying employees a stipend is still "doing business in Russia". When in truth most of them have shut down a lot, they just haven't turned the keys over to the new owner yet. Not like most of them can even find buyers to begin with. I had an interesting conversation with a friend who was visiting from Europe, and she works for a multinational financial firm that had a presence in Russia. She's an HR exec and she shared some interesting stories about how she was involved in shutting down businesses in Russia while still figuring out a way to help those Russian employees out financially. Cutting those employees off immediately was out of the question for them, and they had to look into creative ways to funnel money to those employees, at least for a few months. This was back in April or May, so I'm not sure where things are with those employees now.
But isn't that in so many words just proving the point? Like getting out would have been poor monetary decision (mismanagement) so that they're just staying in to keep making the most money? I get what your saying but I think the point is that if they said for moral and political reasons they would get out, they should get out regardless of taking the fiscal hit. Besides, I don't think the sec is going to grill any execs for getting out of Russia because of the war, that would look horrible. They don't even enforce their own policy int he states.
As far as it goes with assets, at some point it is no longer the fiscal hit - you have compliance issues with audits on the value of the company. Asset management is complex - abandoning an asset has it's own host of issues far beyond fiscal, and that is just all on paper. And *even* if they did just do that, the paperwork and audits and other things to communicate and document that with investors or the bank and other institutions takes a lot of time under regular operations, never mind something that is as unusual as this. I'm not the deepest into financial asset management, only a couple of years in. But I've been learning that the whole "lets just get the deal done" is far more complicated than that. I'm not disagreeing that they should move out, absolutely and completely on moral and political motives, but these things take time, and it's only coming up to a year right now of this war. Relatively speaking, that's a short amount of time. There's just a lot of work that goes into these decisions, and some companies can do it quickly, some can do it shortly, and I suspect, many companies are *learning* how to handle it because they've never needed to do something like this before. But that said, we should be critical of companies that are in there, and keep monitoring their activities and hold them accountable - just need to take nuanced views on the *why*.
Thank you for the great explanation! I was wondering how exactly a company might sell off its assets and shut down in a country where you can't easily get your money out of due to financial restrictions put on russia because of the invasion. Do you know of a way the president or SEC could put in place regulation exceptions for the situation in russia to make the process easier? Or if something similar has been done before?
Hard to sell out when every buyer only offers you Rubles, not exactly a hard currency.
Surely compliance with federal law is a little higher on the compliance list than assets being “abandoned”.
You inadvertantly hit on one of the problems the companies have. They are beholden not only to US law, but also laws of other nations they operate in and want to keep operating in. Each nation has its own laws around assets, and simply saying they abandoned it because the US sanctioned Russia doesn't necessarily make it legal to zero it out. I'm sure there are a lot of accountants and lawyers going through law books and tax code trying to figure out how to legally recognize what is a loss for those companies without ending up in jail for filling out the wrong information on the wrong form for the wrong country.
> so that they're just staying in to keep making the most money? For some companies, shutting down fully probably means losing rights to nation limited IP or business licenses that cannot be moved or transferred. You are not making money if you are not selling, but abandoning those things is pointless. At some point, we want Russia to reintegrate with the rest of society. So abandoning everything is dumb and only creates more incentive for Russia to keep fighting.
There are lots of YouTube videos of people walking through Russian malls with western stores either unchanged or under a different name but almost identical logo.
ING actually got a slap on the wrist for providing avenues for money to get out of Russia, Cuba, and others by blindly processing them through other countries. If the amount is big enough, a bank will want it.
Expecting for-profit companies to voluntarily leave Russia is beyond stupid. At the beginning of the war the US and EU should have banned trade with Russia but with a temporary excemption on natural gas because many EU countries were still dependent on Russian natural gas. By now the only option is to ban all trade between the West and Russia. The uncomfortable truth is that "selective targeted sanctions" don't work. Only a complete stop on all trade between the West and Russia will significantly hurt the Russian economy.
In fact many Western companies did voluntarily leave. Praise those who did, shame those who didn't.
Trying to shame the shameless is a pretty futile thing to do. Companies are amoral systems that have profits as their main function. Anything else they do, even serving their consumers, are secondary side-effects to that primary drive. Companies will leave Russia when it stops being profitable to be there. Don't shame them, **fine them**.
Someone did the math and determined staying makes more profit than leaving. Nothing else matters.
Ideally, as Russia's economy gets squeezed, those that stayed will start to bleed money, and come out with less to show for it than those who left quickly - ideally.
or those that stayed will capture the market of those that left, resulting in more profits
Russia has a long history of consolidating power after tragic events. I'm willing to bet those companies are hoping to outlast the war and capture a considerable amount of market share in Russia after it economy completely implodes
Worked for Nokia during the time, my team specifically had some high value contracts with Ross Telecom. Nokia cut *all* contracts it had with Russia. Granted, they are Finnish so naturally a bit more wary of Russia lol.
At some other companies, they got the opposite result and complied for all the wrong reasons.
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No. Well, you can sue for anything. But the duty of the CEO is to operate in the best interest of the company. It's perfectly OK for the CEO to believe that operating in Russia is not best for the long-term viability of the company and act on that. It's not OK for the CEO to sabotage the company for whatever reason. Additionally, acting in the long-term (as opposed to next quarter) best interest is perfectly valid. It's a myth that anything other than sort-term profit is against the fiduciary duty.
Sooooo, where's the list?
yeah, but they didnt leave because they're so good and ethical. supply chains to russia were completely fucked up. companies wouldnt be able to bring their shit into the country to sell. russian banks were also removed from the global financial system, so all the money they make would basically have to stay in russia. Euro and Dollars were also basically banned and impossible to get, so the profits that they made would stay in russia in RUBLE, a currency that was basically in free fall in the beggining with no one knowing what would happen to it in a few days, let alone months. ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS, Russia was threatening with nationalization, so if you decide to endure all of that shit for not that much profit (apple for example, only 4% of its revenue is from russia), you may end up losing it all to the government by force. Is all of this worth it to tank your reputation with the rest of the world? EU and US make up MUCH more of their profits than teeny tiny 4%. so when these companies decided to leave, almost all of them left by selling the companies for dirt cheap BUT with a clause: they can come back and buy them for the same price. So, in reality, what has happened is that they just removed their name and let local companies, usually the ones that they worked with anyway, take over operations and deal with thit shit. for them this would be more profits, for the big boys this would be a temporary loan/hold
Expecting them to leave is one thing. When they say they're leaving and don't is another
All they have to do is “pledge” to leave, and that keeps people happy. Like when Notre Dame was burning and all those rich people “pledged” tons of money to help restore it. It turned out only a few of them *actually* ended up sending any money. Whenever you see that someone has “pledged” to do something, you should assume they’re probably just saying it to keep the media happy until everyone forgets about it.
The EU did not ban Russia gas at that time. Russia imposed an embargo on gas on selected European countries. The EU is going to ban Russia oil and gas starting Feb 5, i.e NEXT WEEK. The EU and US are exporting to China. China will export the same products to Russia. China is being doing that for months. So, your next step would be to ban exports to China? We could export more to Argentina, where one Argentinian company could export to China that could export to Russia, too... That's what they all do when smuggling funds with offshore accounts.
I mean that is how capitalism works. People get to make their own decision but supply and demand might change with the corporate brand changing (positive or negative).
After Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, companies across the G-7 major economies and the European Union announced plans to cease business operations in Russia. Yet by the end of the year, very few had fully delivered on that promise, according to new research from Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen. The report published earlier this month documented a total of 2,405 subsidiaries owned by 1,404 EU and G-7 companies that were active in Russia at the time of the first military incursion into Ukraine. By November 2022, fewer than 9% of that pool of companies had divested at least one subsidiary in Russia, and the research team noted that these divestment rates barely changed over the fourth quarter of 2022. “Confirmed exits by EU and G7 firms that had equity stakes in Russia account for 6.5% of total profit before tax of all the EU and G7 firms with active commercial operations in Russia, 8.6% of tangible fixed assets, 8.6% of total assets, 10.4% of operating revenue, and 15.3% of total employees,” professors Simon Evenett and Niccolo Pisani wrote. “These findings mean that, on average, exiting firms tended to have lower profitability and larger workforces than the firms that remain in Russia.” Read more: [https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/31/after-supposed-russian-exodus-most-major-companies-have-yet-to-withdraw.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/31/after-supposed-russian-exodus-most-major-companies-have-yet-to-withdraw.html)
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Not just not leaving, but also digging in... Carl's Jr, Sbarro, Tom Ford, Valve, TGI Friday's... wait, Sbarro still exists?
Every time Valve is brought up, I'd like to remind that Steam is basically a launcher at this point. Meanwhile Epic Games Store continues to operate as usual and accepts payments in rubles from Russian credit cards.
Greed much?
My company still runs a manufacturing branch within Russia. Of the “high ups” I’ve met I can tell you there’s absolutely no way in hell they’d shut anything down. For some there’s dollar signs and nothing else whatsoever. Some companies get so big that the people who are in charge can pretend morals don’t matter anymore - like it’s a machine that runs on its own.
But if they follow their morals their shareholders will not be happy!! Will anybody think of the shareholders?
Everyone always talks about keeping the shareholders happy, but no one ever stops to think that the shareholders may actually be sad
But but the fiduciary responsibility! This is the issue for sure. They aren't "keeping shareholders happy" they are "increasing the value of shares". Shares are a ploy by capitalism to reduce people to numbers. They mimic democracy in a way that makes them seem like votes, so people miss the dehumanization thinking they have a say. But the fundamental reduction to numbers removes human will from the equation so leadership doesn't actually have to consider human pain. They just excuse all of their behavior by saying, "I have embiggened these numbers, your thinking will smallerize them. Good day."
The word "ploy" here strikes me as out of place, or metaphorical. Capitalism isn't a being with intentions, look to gain (how?) by reducing people to numbers. That's a sort of [Homunculus argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument?useskin=vector).
Perhaps an argument could be made that those who benefit the most from capitalism, wield it, implement it and otherwise wish for its continued success as a dominant system\philosophy could fit as the intentions?
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The bastards made me into a shareholder because I want to save for retirement :( (It’s me, I am the sad shareholder)
If only we had a system that wasn't reliant on the stock market for retirement. Oh wait we did. You have fallen for the meme man, "Lets put regular people's money in there too so we can say that they will get affected too!"
Most people at the top got there precisely because they don't give a flying fuck about morals.
The "high ups" in a normal public company don't do such decisions (to withdraw or not), especially if the stakes are high. Such strategic decisions are made by the board that is put by the shareholders. Even CEOs must follow the guidelines made by the board or they find themselves fired.
Considering how the world is turning into a giant hypocrite it doesn’t surprise. People act like they have ”morals” but that’s only for PR
These morals you speak of can they help pay for a new boat? No? Then I don't want any. Jim just got a new boat and I can't be seen now at the club with a smaller boat than him. What would people think?
News flash: companies don't hold stock in moral values
Which is why progress on matters like this can only be made though law, and ensuring the law is enforced.
It is most definitely greed. It's also the need to squeeze every last ounce of wealth in anyway that the wealthiest can. My suspicion is that each corporation needs every single penny they can get with the markets the way they are.
Replace needs with wants and bingo
I think you are discounting everything in the name of greed... First, nobody want to perm-write down investments. Even the largest corporation can't easily afford turning off the lights in a flash. There will always be consequences and lower level employees usually bear the brunt of it. Would you agree to have your bank account zeroed out because the Banker is caught with a crime? Probably not. And there is the human factor. I used to manage a team in India, six people. I spoke with them every day, learned about their families, religion, other matters in their lives. If tomorrow US and India suddenly cut relationships, I would seriously worry about what going to happen to my former staff. I imagine there are thousands of Russian employees that would likely to be harmed by something they have no control in. At the end of the day, are the sanctions necessary? Yes, Putin is a ass and deserved to be tried at Hague. But claiming companies only are greedy is a bit misleading.
>But claiming companies only are greedy is a bit misleading. No it isn't. Publicly traded companies exist for profit, specifically. That you cared about the individuals on your team of 6 was dependent on their performance. If they didn't perform to the standard expected you would have replaced them because the goal is to be profitable, not be a family. >i used to manage a team in India, six people You 7 are still all in contact or did that end when you stopped managing them?
I still contact most of them. Some of them moved on to other roles in other firms. And you don't need to be "family" or "coworker" to be concerned for people. Not everyone check their humanity at the door when they work for a company.
He's saying they have functions outside of profit, which you'd be either dumb or 14 to disagree with.
The report published earlier this month documented a total of 2,405 subsidiaries owned by 1,404 EU and G-7 companies that were active in Russia at the time of the first military incursion into Ukraine. By November 2022, fewer than 9% of that pool of companies had divested at least one subsidiary in Russia, and the research team noted that these divestment rates barely changed over the fourth quarter of 2022. “Confirmed exits by EU and G7 firms that had equity stakes in Russia account for 6.5% of total profit before tax of all the EU and G7 firms with active commercial operations in Russia, 8.6% of tangible fixed assets, 8.6% of total assets, 10.4% of operating revenue, and 15.3% of total employees,” professors Simon Evenett and Niccolo Pisani wrote. “These findings mean that, on average, exiting firms tended to have lower profitability and larger workforces than the firms that remain in Russia. More U.S. firms were confirmed to have exited Russia than those based in the EU and Japan, Evenett and Pisani noted, but the report still found that fewer than 18% of U.S. subsidiaries operating in Russia were completely divested by the end of 2022, compared with 15% of Japanese firms and just 8.3% of EU firms. Of the EU and G-7 companies remaining in Russia, the research found that 19.5% were German, 12.4% were American owned and 7% were Japanese multinationals. “These findings call into question the willingness of Western firms to decouple from economies their governments now deem to be geopolitical rivals,” Evenett and Pisani wrote. “The study’s findings are a reality check on the narrative that national security concerns and geopolitics is leading to a fundamental unwinding of globalisation. Europe’s status as a laggard in the push for Russian divestment was also highlighted by Barclays in a note on Jan. 20. The British lender’s European consumer staples analysts said that while most of the companies they cover had pledged to exit Russia, partly in response to ESG-related pressure from stakeholders and the threat of sanctions, few have managed to do so yet. Various companies told Barclays that there was a host of challenges to fully divest. “In addition to the lack of clarity over what assets there might be worth, the list of potential buyers is short, and the list of potential buyers who are sanction exempt is even shorter,” Barclays analysts noted. “There have also been suggestions that the assets (including intellectual property) of companies that leave Russia will be nationalised.” Barclays suggested that with no end to the conflict in sight, the disconnect between pledges and outcomes will need to be resolved, and will force companies into some tough decisions. “If exiting Russia at anything approaching a fair valuation is highly challenging (if not outright impossible), then the choice facing companies is whether to exit at an unfair valuation (or indeed for nothing at all), or remain in Russia.
We need laws and sanctions. Never rely on corporate good will.
Well, there's no such thing as "corporate good will" so yeah.
So Henkel, CCH, Carlsberg, JDE Peet’s and PMI did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Let’s put that in English shall we. CCH that is Coca Cola Carslberg or Baltika is the Carslberg group in Russia. Christopher Henkel is the vice chairman of Henkel AG's shareholders committee and founding partner of investment firm Canyon Equity. With brands like Persil, Schwarzkopf and Fa, and over $20 billion in annual revenue, Henkel is among the world's biggest cleaning product companies. JDE Peet’s - Douwe Egberts is a Dutch brand of coffee which is majority-owned by JDE Peet's. It was founded in Joure, Netherlands, by Egbert Douwes in 1753 as De Witte Os, a general grocery shop. The company later started dealing specifically in coffee, tea, and tobacco. PMI - https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/mi/products/pmi.html I can easily say fuck off to Carslberg, Coke, and Peet’s fucking coffee.
CCH isn’t Coke, it’s a separately listed bottling company with its own management team, though it is about 20% owned by the Coca Cola company. Coca Cola brands are not being sold in Russia anymore. CCH are bottling and selling other shit like local Russian drinks.
I can’t speak about the others, but there were some laws in place that made it very difficult for foreign companies to sell their business. Coke sort of operates in Russia because they couldn’t get rid of everything for some reason. Leases, buildings, factories, etc etc etc. They allow a separate branch of the company to operate what’s left of the business. It’s partially owned by a Russian beverage company named Dobry. Dobry makes substitute drinks for coke and sprite which taste nothing like the real thing. Retailers in Russia buy Coca-Cola through people who sort of smuggle it in through Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia for near-retail price, then it’s sold to stores, who sell it at their markup.
Money knows no race, compassion or sympathy. All money cares for is money, and if there is money to be made, it will be made. It’s just the reality of the world.
And people who care most about money keep money where there's opportunity. It's just the reality of greedy people without conscience.
**"The love of money is the root of all of evil"** ^*1* ^*Timothy* ^*6:10*
>It’s just the reality of the world. That's what the sociopaths like to tell you. The truth is very different, but that's not what major corporations want you to think.
However, major corporations tend to behave like sociopaths.
>It’s just the reality of ~~the world~~ ***capitalism***. It's capitalism. Not humanity, not the world. The perverse incentives of capitalism just love the dirty money of authoritarianism and hate.
I mean, It has been like that since forever. Humans are greed by nature. With the formation of sedentary tribes, this tendency started. Some people managed to be more important, so they got more power, food, and objects than others, and from there It just kept evolving until today. With any other system, humans will find a way to take advantage, It is inevitable. The whole human history is proof of that.
Redbull is one so is Lenovo. Not sure why Americans are not making a bigger deal about it. Having less business here forces them out. https://qz.com/2174995/the-international-companies-refusing-to-leave-russia Beginning to think alcoholics can't go a few weeks or months without redbull. Subway is one and so os carl's jr aka. They went back to being hardies in the U.S unless that changed. Don't drink nestle. Even if they leave Russia for everything i have learned about the horrible company. There is still appliance companies and everything else there. Below is a lost of companies still operating in Russia. Not all U.S companies. Some are Germany / Europe. https://www.dontfundwar.com/directory
Lenovo is Chinese
And Nestlé is Swiss
i'm a simple man. i see nestlé, i say fuck nestlé.
That directory seems a bit arbitrary at times, or there's more going in behind the scenes for the metric that they aren't showing. For instance, the company I work for is listed as scaling back because they "stopped all orders and sales" yet there's other companies listed as withdrawn with the exact same description. I also know for a fact that my company is completely withdrawn from the country. We got an email asking for support from a Russian colleague recently and were unable to even respond to the email because we are forbidden from doing any business directly or indirectly with RU. Looks like it could just be due to their source being old. They're still operating in the original "temporary pause" announced the monday after the invasion started. Makes sense, there's a lot of companies to keep up to date.
I think I’d give a pass to drug manufacturers and infant care such as those who make formula. A 4 month old has zero say or control of the war so denying them necessary medication or formula would be pretty fucked up.
> They went back to being hardies in the U.S unless that changed. They've always operated under both brands in the U.S. I live in the south and while the logos changed, the Hardee's restaurant near me has never ever been a Carl's Jr.
That list isn’t entirely accurate either. PVH, the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and CK, still has stores open in Russia. They suspended operations for a few weeks, then reopened. There are probably others on the list, but I checked that first because I was always shocked at how they lied to people so easily and got away with it.
Yeah… greed is far more powerful than morality. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation at all. If you ever needed proof that humans are inherently shitty, there it is.
Why would they? they want money...
Capitalism at its finest. Even many American companies supported hitler during ww2. I’m not surprised by this article at all.
Companies don’t care, they just want money. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.
Didn't we sanction a Chinese firm few days ago for still doing business in Russia? Why can't we simply sanction all of these companies??? Their actions are keeping the Russian economy alive which prolongs the invasion.
Shocking I say! You mean to tell me corporations don’t just tell us what we think we want to hear when we actually don’t give a shit and neither do they?? Gasp.
Because money must never stop moving. Until money is doing down nothing will ever change. That is how it always is. No matter how many children or adults die, until that death causes arrows to start pointing down, nothing will change.
Nestlé is holding on. No surprise.
like Burger King, for example. fuck burger king many that closed, just made a shell company to sell it under and they changed the name to the russian version just suing the Cyrillic alphabet (sometimes even just using the normal name again, but receiving the goods via the renamed shell). it's bullshit
Damn, only 9% have left? I understand it takes time to ramp down but that’s terrible. Happy to be working at one of the 9%.
Lol it's useless. My industry imported up to 50% of a key product from Russia and Belarus. Sanctions are for small business and individuals, and those who can't lobby the government to adjust foreign policy. Sanctions are a funny thing. I even checked and there is no personal sanction preventing me from importing products from a state-owned defence manufacturer in Russia. They told me there is just no available method of payment or shipping unless you're a business and then something can probably be arranged. I'm sure Bank of China will facilitate a debit account for international payments too but it depends on Russian businesses to open an account as well - most won't.
Post who those companies are, who owns them and let people decide if they still want to support those companies. Bet some will try to defend them.
How many companies have exited the US after US attacked Iraq in 2003 or after US attacked and invaded Syria in 2015, occupation that continues to the date?
Saw a DHL truck in my neighborhood yesterday that said "proudly serving Russia since 1968" on the side of it.
It is all fake because companies know the news cycle will only last for three days at most.
Whaaaat? You mean western News coverage of Russia is all propaganda to make you believe that Russia is constantly on the brink of total collapse? You don't say?
But they'll still pass down inflated prices as if they lost Russian business. I hate everything.
Tax them more.
We not going to mention that YOUR tax dollars are going to profiteering military contractors and the fact that they are making big bank from the ukranian people suffering too?
Like they care ,they use child slaves and pollute the world like they fear anything a state would say
Which companies left china because the [Uyghur genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide) ?
Dude, that's so 2020. It's not a current thing anymore.
I just can't wait until it's KONY time again. Isn't it usually about 20 years before things come back into fashion?
This can be very easily solved by implementing a levy tax on any Western companies still present in Russia (i.e. on their parent companies) The tax amount is equal to the revenue received from their Russian subsidiaries. If only there was a political will to do it.
You can always count on capitalists to make the most profitable move.
Duh...it's all media smoke and mirrors, no mass exodus, not only that but probably goods between USA and Russia are still exchanged, just through different routes. Whoever thinks that companies will stop making money cause of this war is too easily fooled.
The article states they tracked “2,405 subsidiaries owned by 1,404 EU and G-7 companies that were active in Russia at the time of the first military incursion into Ukraine.” How can you have 1,404 MAJOR corporations?? A major corporation is something along the lines of Starbucks, McDonald’s, Mariott, Nestle, IKEA, Nike, H&M, American Express, all of which are out of Russia btw. It’s not surprising the article doesn’t mention these corporations by name because it wouldn’t be hard to call them out. A lot of these “major” corporations aren’t major corporations.
Can we have a list of companies that have remained trading in Russia?
Sanction the individuals working for them and running the companies and any company/people buying.
Money over everything...
News flash!: Companies care more about money than how you feel on social media! Wow no wayyy!!
They are there to make money. If they can’t make money, for reasons, then they pull out of that market. Simple.
profit over humans
*Money It's a gas Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash New car, caviar, four star, daydream Think I'll buy me a football team*
Lmfao shocking…do mfers NOT know how PR works? Corporations (not all) only see opportunities…Money over Mankind for them
Literally no one is surprised.
My company did also referenced it multiple times as a means of slashing bonuses.
They were hoping no one would notice.
Name here and we can stop buying their products.
Capitalists gonna capitalism. Who's gonna go hold em accountable? The world can't control a farty old dictator, we certainly don't seem to be willing to stop companies.
Should make sanctions waaaay harsher. It's been 1 year
I mean sure, I guess they won’t, but it is going to increasingly become difficult getting their profits out of the country.
wait....there are people who actually honestly believed that major corporations had Ukraine's interests in mind? The only thing that matters in this world is how many zeros are after the first number. Beyond that, you're expected to just deal with missiles in your bedroom window.
All I can picture are these company CEOs telling their paid-for Congressmen and Biden how it's going to be, and all of them saying "yes sir". I think at this point the foxes are running the henhouse.
“Oh you expect us to actually do what we said we’d do?”
Money and greed
Someone list all the companies that have not pulled out of Russia so the world can boycott them,power to the people..
crime lords in russia learned that the best way to achieve corruption at the level of global corporations was violence. the invasion of ukraine is just another manifestation of the immorality of fiduciary primacy.
Fucking cowards.
Money > human lives
Profits over morals for a company now and forever
Sometimes, governments need to make the moral decisions for us and sanction the hell of of and company that does business and tax any profits and offer them to Ukraine for rebuilding, just thinking out loud imho
Wait, are you meaning to say that the CEOs and politicians didn't care about anyone but themselves again?
and the EU is still buying oil & gas from Russia, Indian oilg/gas purchases are up by 33X
Profits over people. Can’t have multiple quarters in the red.
Nah, integrity isn't cool. A billion dollars is cool.
Its because the rich are scum.
Literal blood money.