COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, February 19, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Few people in Britain and the United States know which companies have pulled out of Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a report released today by Caliber, a stakeholder intelligence company in Copenhagen.

Despite mounting pressure on businesses to punish Putin’s regime by leaving Russia, as well as many high-profile corporate departures, 72% of respondents say they “don’t know” the current status of 18 multinational companies.

In many instances, especially in the US, more people incorrectly said companies are still doing business in Russia than correctly identified those that are — and vice versa.

The survey also found that few people in the US applied any “reputational penalty” to companies doing business in Russia. Caliber compared the average Trust & Like Score — its chief reputational metric — given by respondents to companies they believed had left Russia with the average Trust & Like Score given to those they believed had stayed.

In the US, respondents gave both sets of companies almost the same score — 77 and 75 out of 100. By contrast, respondents in Denmark gave companies they believed had left Russia a score of 67 and those they believed were still there a score of 37.

Overall, only a third of respondents (36%) think doing business in Russia is “completely unacceptable as long as the war with Ukraine is ongoing”. The older people are, the more likely they are to say so — rising from 25% of 18-24-year-olds to 50% of 65-75-year-olds.

Europeans have stronger opinions than Americans about this, though. Almost half of Danish respondents (46%) say doing business in Russia is “completely unacceptable as long as the war with Ukraine is ongoing”. This compares with 39% of respondents in the UK, 34% in both Germany and France, and 31% in the US.

“Taken together, the results suggest there’s little reputational risk to remaining in Russia, if only because most people don’t know whether a company has stayed or not — and even if they have, people don’t appear to penalize them for it, especially in America,” says Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz. “There’s also little reputational upside to leaving Russia, if nobody knows. In other words, if you’re going to leave Russia, you should do your utmost to make sure people are aware.”

Caliber’s survey is based on almost 10,000 evaluations from more than 5,300 unique respondents in five countries (Denmark, France, Germany, the UK and the US) between 22 January and 4 February 2024.

The selection of 18 companies was based on an analysis by Leave-Russia.org. As of 22 January, nine were deemed to have “exited completely” (British American Tobacco, Henkel, Imperial Brands, McDonald’s, Renault, Shell, Siemens, TetraPak and Volkswagen); nine were deemed to be “continuing operations” in Russia (L’Oréal, Mars, Mondelez, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Philip Morris International, Syngenta and Unilever).

To view the full report, visit our website.

James Clasper
Caliber
james@groupcaliber.com
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