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

Abstract

We evaluated the performance of the largest Russian subsidiaries of multinational corporations in 2020-2024. For this, we explored the ‘Forbes 50 Largest Foreign Corporations in Russia’ lists for 2020–2024. The 2020 and 2021 lists differed by a few companies. The 2021 and 2022 lists differed by a half, mostly because of the exit from Russia of 16 ‘super-giants’ (global corporations with total revenues above US$ 100 billion) of different industries. Simultaneously, ‘Forbes 50 Largest Foreign Corporations in Russia 2023’ accommodated almost 20 companies with smaller worldwide sales. 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. 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’. The ‘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 ‘unfriendly countries’.