Leave Russia? A Year Later Many Companies Can’t, or Won’t.

“Russia was a big market for many companies,” said Olivier Attias, a lawyer at August Debouzy, a law firm in Paris that advises major French companies with operations in Russia. “Taking the decision to get out was hard, and the process for leaving has been difficult.”

Data compiled by Yale showed that of nearly 1,600 companies in Russia before the war, more than a quarter had continued to operate fully there, with some only postponing planned investments. In a survey of twice as many firms, by the Kyiv School of Economics, that proportion was closer to 50 percent.

But another study suggests how few have fully cut ties, finding that below 9 percent of about 1,400 companies from Europe, the United States, Japan, Britain and Canada had divested a Russian subsidiary since the war. Those that did accounted for a small share of the Western business footprint, which the report said called into question the willingness of Western firms to leave.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/business/russia-companies-exit.html