Less than Nine Percent of Western Firms Have Divested from Russia

16 Pages Posted: 13 Jan 2023 Last revised: 14 Apr 2023

See all articles by Simon Evenett

Simon Evenett

University of St. Gallen - Economics Department - SIAW

Niccolò Pisani

IMD

Date Written: December 20, 2022

Abstract

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the corporate decisions that followed offer insights into the extent to which Western firms are willing and able to sever commercial ties with nations now viewed as geopolitical rivals by their governments. We gathered extensive data on equity investments made by foreign companies headquartered in the European Union (EU) and G7 nations and checked whether following the outbreak of armed conflict divestment of their Russian subsidiaries could be confirmed. At the end of November 2022, our analysis shows that 8.5% of EU and G7 companies had divested at least one of their Russian subsidiaries. We performed extensive robustness checks that confirm our overall findings while also revealing some notable variation in divestment rates.

Keywords: Geopolitics, decoupling, divestment strategy, Russia, Ukraine, Russian invasion, international business, globalization

JEL Classification: F23, F51, F52

Suggested Citation

Evenett, Simon and Pisani, Niccolò, Less than Nine Percent of Western Firms Have Divested from Russia (December 20, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4322502 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4322502

Simon Evenett (Contact Author)

University of St. Gallen - Economics Department - SIAW ( email )

Bodanstrasse 8
CH-9000 St. Gallen
Switzerland
41 71 224 2315 (Phone)
41 71 224 2298 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.evenett.com

Niccolò Pisani

IMD ( email )

Ch. de Bellerive 23
P.O. Box 915
CH-1001 Lausanne
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://www.imd.org/faculty/professors/pisani-niccolo/

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