Strategic actions of the largest foreign companies in Russia in the first years of strengthening sanctions against Russia

Post-Communist Economies. 2024. Vol. 36. No. 8. P. 1014–1034.

Gurkov I. B., Filinov N., Saidov Z.

We evaluated the©behaviour of the largest Russian subsidiaries of multinational corporations in 2022–2023. For this, we explored the ‘Forbes 50 Largest Foreign Corporations in Russia’ lists for 2021–2024. The 2020 and 2021 lists differed by a few companies. The 2021 and 2022 lists differed by a half,mostly because of the exit 10 from Russia of 16 ‘super-giants’ (global corporations with total revenues above US$ 100 billion) of different industries (IT and electronics, car assembly, textiles, and catering). Simultaneously, ‘Forbes 50 Largest Foreign Corporations in Russia 2023’ accommodated almost 20 companies with smaller worldwide sales and an 15 average level of revenues from Russia in 2022 around 700 US $ million. In 2023, 13 more companies left ‘Forbes 50 Largest Foreign Corporations in Russia’ and 13 companies entered this list. Such ‘new entrants’ to the world of Forbes are from China, Turkey, Belorussia, and several other countries, including the countries that do participate in sanctions against Russia and are officially called ‘unfriendly countries’ by the Russian authorities. In general, only 18 companies from the ‘Forbes list of foreign companies in Russia 2021’ remained in the ‘Forbes list of foreign companies in Russia 2024’, including four companies from the top 10 in 2020. The 25 ‘Forbes list of foreign companies in Russia 2024’ may be considered a list of companies that made a choice to try to continue business in Russia and withstand both the Western sanctions and Russian measures against corporations from ‘unfriendly countries’.

Keywords: санкции, крупные корпорации, sanctions, large corporations, headquarter-subsidiary relations, Management in practice, Транснациональные корпорации (ТНК), subsidiary strategies, стратегии дочерних компаний, практика менеджмента, взаимоотношения подразделений и центра корпорации