Companies that announced withdrawal from Russia suffered $103bn in losses - NYT
The companies that announced their withdrawal from Russia after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine suffered a total of $103 billion in losses.
According to Censor.NET, citing Radio Liberty, this is stated in the NYT article.
The authors note that Putin has managed to turn the companies' exit into a benefit for the loyal elite and the entire state. Companies that leave the Russian market are forced to sell their assets in Russia for a song, and the circle of buyers of these assets is determined by President Putin himself.
In their investigation, the journalists described how companies coordinate their exit from Russian business with the Russian government. Since the start of the full-scale war, all such transactions have to be approved by a special subcommittee of the Russian Ministry of Finance. Starting in August 2022, a number of transactions, including those involving bank shares, will have to be approved by Putin himself.
In December 2022, a sub-committee of the Russian Ministry of Finance obliged the departing companies to make a discount of at least 50 per cent when selling and simultaneously make a "voluntary contribution" to the Russian budget - from 5 to 10 per cent of the market value of the asset.
It is likely that these "voluntary contributions" have brought at least one billion 250 million dollars to the Russian budget over the past year, the newspaper notes. According to the Russian edition of RBC, from December 2022 to April this year, the total amount of contributions was 20 billion rubles.
Since the spring of 2023, the Russian subsidiaries of several Western companies that planned to leave Russia have been nationalised.
As an example of a deal in which the state intervened, the NYT cites the attempts of the Dutch brewing company Heineken to sell its Russian assets. The Russian authorities refused to agree on a deal with the buyer of Heineken's assets and transferred them to the Arnest Group, which produces Dichlorvos repellents, Prelesti hairspray, air fresheners, deodorants and shoe polish.
