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Not only McDonald’s has been renamed in Russia.
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APA/AFP/ALEXANDER NEMENOV
Many companies are being ridiculed because they haven’t left Russia yet. But those who left sold their businesses to the Russians, who continue to market the products under a new name. They weren’t very creative with the rebranding – intentionally, it seems.
A disappointment usually follows an unrealistic expectation. And that’s why the latest study from the University of St. Gallen on the defaulting withdrawal of Western companies from Russia caused such a stir. As recently became known, the authors of the study determined that of the 2,405 companies active as subsidiaries of 1,404 EU and G7 companies in Russia before the start of the war in Ukraine, by the end of November – and indeed largely to this day – most stayed. Only 8.5% of EU and G7 companies have sold at least one of their Russian subsidiaries.
At 8.3 percent, EU area companies are slightly below average, those in the US at just under 18 percent and those in Japan at 15 percent are well above average. To which it should be added that Europe was and is the main trading partner of the Russians and that, incidentally, several American companies also operated their business in Russia from the EU and are doing so.
Incidentally, what is rarely discussed is the fact that nearly every company that pulled out of Russia by selling them, and thus earning plaudits, secured a multi-year repurchase option.
And always worth noting in this context is the rebranding that buyers go through with the relevant brands in order not to lose the shine of the Western brand and at the same time appear as a new, purely Russian company.
So what names are western brands marketed under in Vladimir Putin’s empire?