All of the companies still doing business in Russia

Market Trading EssentialsMarch 17, 2022

2 minutes read

Nearly 30 companies are “digging in,” defying public demands to exit Russia or reduce their activities in the pariah state, according to a list kept by a professor with the Yale School of Management.

Among those operating undeterred: Authentic Brands’ Reebok, Halliburton, Koch Industries, LG Electronics, and Subway, which has nearly 450 franchised locations in Russia.

The list, launched several days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is “updated continuously” by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, and his research team in a bid to “reflect new announcements from companies in as close to real time as possible.”

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Kansas-based Koch Industries “will continue to operate its two glass manufacturing facilities in Russia,” citing a Wednesday statement from Koch President and COO Dave Robertson that acknowledged the decision, affecting about 600 Guardian Industries employees.

“We have no other physical assets in Russia, and outside of Guardian, employ 15 individuals in the country,” Robertson wrote. “While Guardian’s business in Russia is a very small part of Koch, we will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them (which is what The Wall Street Journal has reported they would do).”

“Doing so would only put our employees there at greater risk and do more harm than good.”

Since the initial publication of the list during the week of Feb. 28, Sonnenfeld and fellow researchers have revised their categorization method. In a March 16 article for Fortune, Sonnenfeld acknowledged that the initial “naughty and nice list … smoothed over some of the complexities related to these companies’ exits from Russia.”

The revised list includes four categories: “withdrawing all business,” “suspending operations,” “reducing activities,” and “economic collaboration.”

There is no excuse for companies in the fourth, last, category, Sonnenfeld wrote for Fortune, which fell from 34 businesses Wednesday to 27 Thursday.

“Worst of all are the companies in category #4 that continue in Russia unabated,” he wrote. “Oil servicers such as Halliburton and Schlumberger remain economic collaborators despite U.S. sanction. I met Jean Riboud, the legendary former Schlumberger CEO who over several decades built Schlumberger into being the largest in the industry, a company that under his leadership was considered the best managed firm in the world. A Buchenwald Holocaust survivor and fighter in the resistance against the Nazis, Riboud, who died in 1985, would not recognize his firm today.”

Those 27 companies “defying demands for exit or reduction of activities,” as of Thursday, per Sonnenfeld’s list:

One-hundred and fifty companies have made what Sonnenfeld calls a “clean break/surgical removal/resection” from Russia as of March 17. They include: