Dusseldorf Not only intellectuals and artists, but also more and more companies are withdrawing from Russia. Among them are large international corporations such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s or Ikea, but also Dax giants such as VW and Mercedes-Benz.
The Russian government is threatening countermeasures: According to the German foreign trade agency GTAI, the Ministry for Economic Development has launched a draft law that is due to be passed this week.
It states that companies that are more than 25 percent owned by foreigners from “unfriendly countries” can be placed under external management, split off and sold. This would amount to expropriation and nationalization.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said the goal is to build new production in Russia on the basis of the assets panicked by investors.
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For Jens Koenen, head of the Handelsblatt corporate department office in Frankfurt, this is difficult to imagine: “I have no idea how the Russian government’s plan is supposed to work. Russia would have to pump huge sums of money into these companies – a country that, mind you, is on the brink of national bankruptcy,” he says in the new episode of Handelsblatt Today.
However, there could still be expropriations in isolated cases, because Russia could try to demonstrate its power in this way, Koenen believes. Anything beyond that would have the opposite effect: “If Russia were to carry out expropriations on a large scale, its reputation as a business location would be permanently damaged.”
Which emerging markets could benefit from high commodity prices
In addition, the war in Ukraine is having a massive impact on the global economy. Last but not least, raw material prices have risen sharply. Some emerging countries could therefore benefit from the conflict – such as the oil exporters Chile, Malaysia, South Africa and Brazil.
But what is the current status of the emerging markets? How much is high inflation hurting emerging markets, and could China beat the US economically this year? Klaus-Jürgen Gern from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy analyzes the situation.
More: “Hurricane of hunger” – That’s how dangerous the Russian wheat export ban is
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