Western companies that remain in Russia fear the risk of losing all their property.
Fortum, along with Germany’s Uniper, were the first companies to have their assets seized in Russia. They were followed in July by France’s Danone and Denmark’s Carlsberg, whose local divisions were also seized by the Russian state.
Western companies that remain in Russia fear the risk of losing all their property.
Unilever’s new CEO Hein Schumacher told reporters that Unilever’s abandonment of its Russian business would lead to its nationalization, Reuters reported. He also said the company had been unable to find a solution to a possible sale of assets in Russia.
“The first option is to give up our business. We believe that, given all the developments that have taken place recently, this could in fact lead to its nationalization. The second option is to sell the business, but the reality is that we have not found a viable solution that meets our stated objectives. None of the options are really good, but the last option of operating our business in a constrained way is the least bad and that is where we are,” Schumacher said in a call with journalists.
Against the backdrop of these statements, it is important to note the cases of successful exits of Western owners from Russia.
The most profitable assets, as journalists from Novaya Gazeta-Europe found out, went to Novatek, which received stakes from France’s Total Energies in the Terneftegaz project and British Shell in Sakhalin-2.
Novatek made 40 billion rubles (about 500 million euros) in net profit from these projects last year. The company’s largest shareholders are billionaire Leonid Mikhelson, Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko and Total itself (19.4%).
Among other purchases in Russia, Shell sold its Russian network of gas stations and a lubricants plant in the Tver region to Lukoil (Vagit Alekperov and Leonid Fedun). There were 411 Shell-branded gas stations in Russia, some of which were owned by the company itself and some of which operated under the Shell brand on a franchise basis. After the change of ownership, the network developed under the Finnish brand Teboil.
Vladimir Potanin, co-owner of Nornickel, bought the business of the French Société Générale—Rosbank and two insurance companies.
In 2022, he also bought Tinkoff Bank, and news about the billionaire’s interest in other assets appeared regularly.
Both, Société Générale and businessman Oleg Tinkov, were lucky to find a Russian buyer in time. Potanin, who has been a partner of Societe Genérale group for years, bought the Russian division of the bank, Rosbank, which Potanin himself had founded in 1998.
Tinkov, in turn, also offered Potanin to buy his bank for about $300 million and managed to get his money.
Today, such a scenario would be almost ideal for many Western companies, but they are finding it increasingly difficult to find a buyer.
