Hungarian companies doing business in Russia put on Yale’s shame list
Some believe that Russia can be brought to its knees by severe sanctions. The strongest advocate of this belief is Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He urges an economic secession between Russia and the rest of the world. Therefore, he regularly slams, for example, Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán. Orbán refuses to accept sanctions in the energy sector or nuclear cooperation. Others believe that Russia cannot be broken by sanctions partly because Moscow can endure alone, and they can find alternative ways to sell their products.
Yale shared a shame list
Yale seems to belong to the former group. The famous US university’s School of Management shared a “shame list” of companies yesterday that are still doing business in Russia. On their website, they claim that they have been tracking the responses of over 1,000 companies regarding the issue. “Over 750 companies have publicly announced they are voluntarily curtailing operations in Russia to some degree beyond the bare minimum legally required by international sanctions —
but some companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred.“
According to their website, there are many fellow staff members who regularly update the list. “We have a team of experts with backgrounds in financial analysis, economics, accounting, strategy, governance, geopolitics, and Eurasian affairs with
collective fluency in ten languages including Russian, Ukrainian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Polish, and English,
compiling this unique dataset using both public sources such as government regulatory filings, tax documents, company statements, financial analyst reports, Bloomberg, FactSet, MSCI, S&P Capital IQ, Thomson Reuters, and business media from 166 countries; as well as non-public sources, including a global wiki-style network of 250+ company insiders, whistleblowers, and executive contacts,” they write.
Even a lot of US companies are on the list
According to the university’s current list, these are the Hungarian companies doing business-as-usual in Russia:
There are no Hungarian companies in the “Holding Off New Investments/Development” and “Withdrawal” categories. Meanwhile, Wizz Air temporarily suspended all flights to and from Russia. We reported about their decision HERE. Graphisoft, a Hungarian design software company headquartered in Budapest, suspended new activities and disabled access to their commercial services in Russia. Therefore, these two companies were put in the “Suspension” category.
In the “Scaling Back” category, there is Tungsram, which offers lighting and intelligent lighting-based services, smart solutions for buildings and cities, as well as tailor-made “greentech” solutions. They wrote to Yale that they stopped producing products and projects.
Interestingly, there are also 28 US companies continuing business-as-usual in Russia. Among them, there are Avaya, Koch Industries, and Cloudflare.
Source: som.yale.edu