Posted on 07/19/2023 1:15:09 PM PDT by Timber Rattler
The Kremlin’s move to seize the Russian assets of Carlsberg and Danone is Moscow’s most brazen attack yet on foreign firms operating in Russia, and is likely to trigger fresh concern among businesses that have continued operating in the country, experts said.
President Vladimir Putin is handing control of the Russian subsidiaries of French food maker Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg to regime loyalists, according to local media reports and government corporate registries, in a move that amounts to an expropriation of assets valued at well over $1 billion.
Both companies have huge operations in Russia and had publicly said they were preparing to exit the country, though had not yet closed down operations or finalized a sale.
Danone, the largest producer of dairy products in Russia, took in $3 billion in revenues in Russia last year, according to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE). Its Russian subsidiary will be taken over by longtime Putin friend Taimuraz Bolloev, who has connections to Kremlin-favored tycoons Yury and Mikhail Kovalchuk as well as Arkady Rotenburg.
Beer-maker Carlsberg — whose Russian subsidy Baltika chalked up $1.6 billion in sales in 2022, according to KSE analysis — is to be handed to Yakub Zakriev, the nephew of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a key Putin ally in the restive North Caucasus region.
“It shows that Russia is prepared to take countermeasures against Western companies in order to curry favor with the new elites. The redistribution of wealth is reminiscent of the 1990s, when the oligarchs emerged,” said Maria Shagina, a senior research fellow for economic sanctions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscowtimes.com ...
Putin don’t need no stinking investments in the future
SWIFT retribution.
The Western world has been waging a quiet war against Russia for several years. No surprise they are responding in kind. It’s like Germany sinking the Lusitania in 1916. I mean, what did anyone really expect?
What goes around, comes around.
This is penny-ante.
Wait'll the USD gets hoist by the BRICS gold currency.
Why would any country hold their savings/reserves in US Dollars when US Government will steal them from you as a form of political pressure?
But, but - we in the West have IPhones and digital currency!!
We don't need no steenking physical assets!
So how’d that work out for Germany?
BINGO!
And the article has its undies in a bunch about mere corporations - when we're talking about the foreign dollar reserves of ENTIRE COUNTRIES.
No wonder the smart countries are repatriating their gold reserves and getting the heck out of the USD...
The exit of Carlsberg could be an opportunity for Bud Light
How long can we poke the bear and not expect it to hit back? We’ve been lucky so far.
Well, given western governments expropriated Russian assets already, I’m surprised they had not made this move yet. Retaliation in kind is what everybody should have expected right from the start.
I’d say it was part of a chain of events that eventually led to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and also to Hitler in Germany. Woodrow Wilson poked the bear by sending arms to Europe. Germany responded. That led to US involvement in WWI which was a massive mistake for western civilization. Europe would have been far better off if Germany had won WWI and the Bolshevik revolution has been crushed and Hitler had never had any reason to rise in politics.
This little Ukraine conflict seems likely to lead to a massively destructive, perhaps nuclear war in the near future. I see strong echoes of WWI in what is going on right now. Cheering for Ukraine? The world really would be much better off if Putin won.
Why would any foreigner (or for that matter native) hold their money in British pounds, Canadian Dollars, US Dollars, Euros etc when the governments in those countries will just steal your personal assets simply for being of a disfavored nationality or because they don’t like your politics?
Not expropriated but frozen.
I feel so sorry for the Corporate Giants boo hoo...
It is difficult to develop a scenario worse than what actually played out by our decision to enter WWI. Think of all the lives lost. We should have been the peacemaker.
Yachts and villas stolen and auctioned off from people because they are Russian
Russia’s sovereign assets were frozen. A lot of the personal property of individual Russians in Britain, EU countries and Canada was expropriated.
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