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Article

20 Jan 2023

Author:
Euronews

More than 550 global companies still doing business in Russia, according to report by Yale University

More than 550 global companies are still doing business in Russia. Many are European, 20 January 2023

More than 550 international companies, many from Europe, are still doing business in Russia to a lesser or greater extent, defying public pressure to pull out of the country following the invasion of Ukraine, according to a new report by Yale University.

Out of these, 223 companies are considered to be operating "business as usual," including prominent firms from Italy (Boggi, Benetton, Calzedonia), France (Clarins, Etam, Lacoste), Germany (Siemens Healthineers, B. Braun), and the Netherlands (Philips).

The "business as usual" list also features some well-known American firms, like Tom Ford, Tupperware and TGI Friday's, as well as numerous Chinese enterprises, like Alibaba, Tencent and ZTE, and air passenger carries, like Emirates Airlines, Egyptair, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines 

The numbers are compiled and regularly updated by an expert team from Yale University, which has been tracking corporate announcements since the war broke out in February 2022.

In total, the Yale database features 1,389 companies from all over the world, split into five categories...Put together, the three worst-performing categories – digging in, buying time and scaling back – add up to 555 companies, making up almost 40% of the database.

Among the companies still "buying time," there are multiple renowned firms from both the EU and the G7, such as AstraZeneca (UK), Barilla (Italy), Bayer (Germany), BlaBlaCar (France).

Engie (France), Giorgio Armani (Italy), ING Bank (the Netherlands), Merck (Germany), Nestle (Switzerland), Red Bull (Austria), Total Energies (France), Unilever (UK) and Yves Rocher (France) are some of the European companies also included in that category.

The ones who are in process of "scaling back" features easily recognisable names like Adobe (US), Allianz (Germany), Google's parent company Alphabet (US), Bosch (Germany), Coca-Cola (US), Duolingo (US), Eni (Italy), Ferrero (Italy), JPMorgan (US), Microsoft (US), Ørsted (Denmark), Pirelli (Italy), Spotify (Sweden), Toyota (Japan) and Vattenfall (Sweden).

It's unclear how much money these companies are making through their Russian operations, given the country's economic slowdown and the trade disruption caused by Western sanctions.

However, their continued presence in Russia appears to undermine the political unity of Western countries, who have for months been trying to slash revenues that can bankroll the Kremlin's war machine.

"Our sanctions per se do not oblige companies to leave Russia, many decided to go on their own," a European Commission spokesperson told Euronews, in response to the Yale findings...

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