We will continue to provide updated information on a monthly basis.

Prepared by the KSE Institute team and KSE members of the Board of Directors with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation; 07.10.2024-06.11.2024.

Disclaimer: At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine KSE Institute launched an analytical project, which was named “SelfSanctions”, aimed to collect data on foreign companies operating in the Russian market and limiting or terminating their activities. Examination of data was conducted jointly with specialists from the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. The database contains a lot of information, we collect daily statistics on changes in the status of foreign companies operating/operated in the Russian market and limiting or terminating their activities. Also, we created the Telegram bot https://t.me/exit_ru_bot for tracking/monitoring of news on priority foreign companies (coverage 1, 2, 3 or 7 days of monitoring). Also, we do regular analysis of changes in share prices and capitalization of parent groups of companies that have or have had business in Russia.

KSE database is partly based on the Yale’s School of Management database, the University of St.Gallen latest Paper, epravda.com.ua, squeezingputin.com, https://bloody.energy/ and leave-russia.org websites and other open sources. Data is verified and KSE status is assigned. Data on stocks is taken from Google and Yahoo Finance. At the same time, the KSE database is more complete and comprehensive and contains much more information than most other similar databases, as it also includes data on number of staff, revenue, capital and other financial indicators, the latest updates and changes in statuses, links to used sources, and daily updates from the telegram-bot etc.

KSE Institute and Leave Russia project are the part of B4Ukraine Coalition since mid-2022.

KSE Institute is glad to announce have finalized merging with project leave-russia.org which was developed by a team of volunteers.

Also, we developed an application in the  Apple Store which is available only for mobile devices in addition to our Telegram bot https://t.me/exit_ru_bot. It allows you to find any brand or company that is operating in Russia just by scanning barcodes.

On February 24, 2024 KSE Institute merged KSE status “wait” with status “stay” as 2 years of the war gave enough time for companies to leave Russia

KSE DATABASE SNAPSHOT as of 06.11.2024

Number of the companies that continue Russian operations (KSE’s status «stay»¹) – 2 197² (+21 per month)

Number of the companies that have curtailed Russian operations (KSE’s status «leave») – 1 365 (-2 per month)

Number of the companies that completed withdrawal from Russia (KSE’s status “exited”) – 440 (+13 per month)

As of November 6, 2024, we have identified about 4,002 companies, organizations and their brands from 108 countries and 58 industries and analyzed their position on the Russian market. About 40% of them are public ones, for ~1’616 public groups of companies, we also identified (where it was possible) their operating business in Russia (the presence of a controlling stake in a legal entity and revenue received) and found the data for 2021 before invasion was started, which allowed us to calculate the value of capital invested in the country (about $194.5 billion), local revenue (about $320.3 billion), local assets (about $343.8 billion) as well as staff (about 1.451 million people) and taxes paid (about $25.6 billion). 1,365 foreign companies have suspended or ceased operations in Russia. Also, we added information about 440 companies that have completed the sale/liquidation of their business in Russia based on the information collected from the official registers (8 business sales and 4 full business liquidations took place in October 2024).

As can be seen from the tables below, as of November 6, 2024, 440 companies which had already completely exited from the Russian Federation, in 2021 had at least 564,400 personnel, $103.6 bn in annual revenue, $52.6bn in capital and $84.4bn in assets; companies, that declared a complete withdrawal from Russia had 222,700 personnel, $45.9bn in revenues, $20.3bn in capital and $45.7bn in assets; companies that suspended operations on the Russian market had 120,600 personnel, annual revenue of $34.1bn, $41.3bn in capital and $102.0bn in assets.

In this digest, we will summarize the results of October 2024 and provide year-to-date statistics on full exits since the beginning of the war.

% of exited is 32% based on revenue allocation, those who are leaving represent 25% of total revenue (with 43% share of suspensions and 57% of withdrawals sub-statuses), % of staying companies represent 43% of revenue based on revenue generated in Russia in 2021. So we observe the situation that % of staying companies is less than % of leaving ones (which means that about 57% (!) of pre-invasion revenue generated by foreigners is leaving or already left Russia).

If we take a look at the same chart based on revenue-2022 distribution – the picture will be a bit different:

% of exited is 29% based on revenue allocation, those who are leaving represent only 16% of total revenue (with 40% share of suspensions and 60% of withdrawals sub-statuses), % of staying companies represent 55% of revenue based on revenue generated in Russia in 2022.

Key conclusion could be the following: on the general background of falling revenue in 2022-2023 companies which made the decision to leave earned less than those who stayed and more companies migrated from the “suspension” sub-status to “withdrawal” showing their increased intention to cut ties with Russia.

Geography is the most important factor that explains companies’ decisions. Companies from “unfriendly countries” (a term coined by the Russian Federation to describe countries that joined the international sanctions policy against the Russian Federation in response to its invasion of Ukraine) are much more likely to exit.

Here are also the breakdowns by countries and by industries of the companies which already exited:

So, as of the end of October 2024, companies from 37 countries and 43 industries have already exited showing their true reaction to the war started by Russia and its not provoked aggression against Ukraine. Most of the companies were headquartered in the USA, Germany, Finland, Great Britain, France and Sweden and operated in the “Automotive”, “Electronics”, “Consumer goods and closing”, “Energy, oil and gas”, “Finance and payments”, “Construction & Architecture” and “Industrial equipment” industries.

For a more accurate explanation of the behavior of companies, it is necessary to take into account several factors at the same time. According to our analysis, companies in the technological and communication sector are most prone to exit (as opposed to those who remain in the Russian Federation). Partially due to the fact that they have fewer physical assets in the Russian Federation than in the production sectors. Companies that produce products for the daily consumption of the population in the Russian Federation are less likely to leave (this is one of their key explanations why they do not leave). Pharmaceutical companies that explain their decisions by concern for public health tend to be the “staying” companies.

Companies with larger local revenue and public companies are also inclined to leave the market: presumably, large multinational corporations are more responsible for their reputation and respond to investors’ requests. In addition, it is likely that the exit of the largest multinationals from the Russian Federation is not as painful for them for global business as it is for smaller companies, for which the share of the Russian market can be significant.

Here is the list of “exiters” that we were able to identify recently: Abloy LLC (liquidation), Ishida (liquidation), Kongsberg Maritime (liquidation), Moncler (liquidation) and Lindström Group (sale was missed earlier) and we decided to mark Fortum as “exited” as it was seized before and there is lack of company’s possibility to get back their assets in Russia. Also, 7 business sales took place in October 2024: A.Raymond Group, ANAS, Benteler International, GRAITEC, Magneti Marelli, Unilever and UNIQA.

Most of these exits were identified before in their preparation phase. Also, we are not in a hurry to assign “exited” status to many companies that are literally on the verge of exit, although they have not yet finalized this process (even though some of them have already been nationalized, partly sold their business or initiated bankruptcy procedures).

Here are just some of them: Sony Mobile Communications (Sony has filed an application to liquidate a Russian legal entity. At the end of 2023, the company had only one employee – the CEO, Belarusian citizen Anatoly Mashkov. The organization had already tried to liquidate itself in December 2023, but was denied), Universal Beverage (The holding company Glavprodukt, which belongs to the American Universal Beverage and produces canned goods, including stewed meat, is being transferred to the temporary management of the Federal Property Management Agency by decree of the Russian president. This is another case of the de facto nationalization of a private company) and Fraport (Orbit Aviation LCC is allowed to acquire 25% of the German Fraport AG in the authorized capital of the management company of Pulkovo Airport. The order to this effect was signed by President Vladimir Putin on October 25, 2024). 

The next review of deals for November 2024 will be available in a month.

What’s new last month – key news from Daily monitoring

(updated on a monthly basis) ⁷

Recently we made a lot of significant improvements in our Telegram-bot with improving the interface, adding overall statistics and reflecting on the latest KSE statuses of companies taken from the KSE public database.

KSE team has incredible news about the project again! We are not standing still, and in addition to supporting and developing our database, which currently contains the world’s most comprehensive information on the activities of global corporations on the Russian market, we are also developing our technical products. We developed a barcode scanner, which is available at the link https://leaverussia.kse.ua/ (only for mobile devices!) or in our Telegram bot https://t.me/exit_ru_bot! To use the scanner, you need to have a mobile phone, scan the barcode of the product in the store (or anywhere else) with a camera, and you will see information about its manufacturer and whether it also operates in Russia.

Also, thanks to the use of ChatGPT, for most companies in the consumer sector, we have created the most complete list of 7500+ major brands and trademarks, so the search has become even more convenient and better. In addition, the scanner can be saved as a regular app on the smartphone home screen and Eng/Ukr versions are available.

In July 2023, the KSE Institute, jointly with the B4Ukraine coalition partners published a new research entitled “The Business of Staying: a closer look at multinational revenues and taxes in Russia in 2022”, you can download its full text in English using the following links: https://kse.ua/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/The-Business-of-Staying-1.pdf and https://b4ukraine.org/pdf/BusinessOfStaying.pdf 

In September 2023, the KSE Institute jointly with the B4Ukraine coalition partners published another research entitled “The Business of Leaving: How Multinationals Can Responsibly Exit Russia”, you can download its full text in English here: https://b4ukraine.org/pdf/B4Ukraine_Business_of_Leaving_report.pdf 

At the end of November 2023, the KSE Institute published a new study entitled “Analysis of foreign business exits from Russia“, which analyzed and systematized the results of 300 exits of foreign companies from the Russian Federation. This paper includes detailed analysis of the largest deals, main buyers/beneficiaries, continuation of trade relations after sales and many other interesting insights. You can download the full text of the study in English here:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4648135 

Also, at the end of February 2024, the KSE Institute jointly with the B4Ukraine coalition partners published the report entitled “2024 Is the Year to Defund Russia’s War – The West Holds the Key” where, among other things, we estimated that the amount of taxes paid by foreign companies operating in Russia in 2022-2023 may amount to $20 billion annually. You can download its full text in English here: https://b4ukraine.org/pdf/b4u_report_2024.pdf

In January 2024, KSE Institute with support of volunteers developed a new application for Apple Store in addition to our database, which currently contains the world’s most comprehensive information on the activities of global corporations on the Russian market.

Leave Russia App allows you to find any international brand or foreign company that is operating and paying taxes in Russia. Additionally, you can find out such statistics (if a company has local entity/ies in Russia): number of staff, revenue generated, amount of capital, assets etc. With our service, you can not only find such a company, but also check proof links with information about the company’s public statement or public news that can confirm this information. Click to download Leave Russia from the App Store!

In September 2024, the KSE Institute published the analytical note entitled “What are the financial results of foreign business in Russia in 2023, and have exit rates slowed down?” where, among other things, we estimated that over the two years since the full-scale invasion, Russia has lost USD 125 billion in revenue from Western companies, equivalent to about 5.6% of the country’s GDP“. You can download its full text in English here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4961551

KSE’s Barcode Scanner (mobile devices only)

KSE’s application in the Apple Store

KSE Telegram bot on news monitoring @exit_ru_bot

Twitter of SelfSanctions project

Leave-russia.org website

BI analytics @ Leave-russia.org

Company news @ Leave-russia.org

Twitter of leave-russia.org website 

LinkedIn of leave-russia.org

YouTube of leave-russia.org

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¹ – KSE status “leave” – Companies that have published on the company’s official website (or their release has appeared in a foreign publication such as FT, NYT, etc.) that are completely shutting down in Russia or companies that have officially announced that they are temporarily reducing operations in Russia
– KSE status “wait” – Companies that have published on the company’s official website (or their release has appeared in a foreign publication such as FT, NYT, etc.) that they are reducing only part of their business operations by continuing to work on other operations or companies that have reported delaying future investment / development / marketing , while continuing their core business On February 24, 2024 KSE status “wait” was merged with status “stay”
– KSE status “stay” – Companies that ignore exit / downsizing requirements in Russia, as well as companies that have officially stated that they remain in Russia or news of their exit have not been found
– KSE status “exited” – Companies that sold its business/assets or its part of the business to a local partner and leaved the market

² In June 2024 KSE Institute reviewed statuses of companies based on new revenue data for 2023, about 100 companies moved from status “stay” to status “leave” due to significant drop of revenue (60%+), usually the same trend took place in 2022 as well

³ When we analyze # of local companies, # of staff and local financials (such as revenue, capital, assets, taxes paid) – KSE Institute uses data according to Russian Accounting Standards (or RAS) from the official EGRUL register, all steps how we do it are explained in detail in the Methodology we published here. The key source for local financials is data from the Federal Tax Service of Russia. The latest available consolidated data for each group’s largest Russian units reported in line with local accounting standards excluding intragroup eliminations and other IFRS or GAAP adjustments. More details are available here.

⁴ On 24 July 2022, we introduced the new status “exited”, which reflects the companies’ actions to finalise the exit from the Russian market. The status relies on data from the Uniform State Register of Legal Entities in Russia (USRLE or EGRUL) and complementary analysis such as companies’ announcements and media publications of company activities. At the same time, companies’ activities can be hard to track and can be missed in the analysis, especially for companies less covered in the media. We encourage our readers to inform us if they are familiar with the companies’ actions that contradict their announcements about the exit via the Feedback Form at https://leave-russia.org/

⁵ Increase in assets vs previous data is explained by adding newly collected information on the bank’s assets which was not available before, as well as the addition of several new companies from the TOP-50 largest foreign companies rating by Forbes Russia.

⁶ It needs to be mentioned that open access to Russia’s EGRUL register was partly classified recently, so KSE Institute could miss some of the exits but we found the new solution allowing us to get the proper access to the registers in the future.

⁷ A “Company news” section is available on the project site https://leave-russia.org/, follow daily updates directly on the website