>

But if they follow their morals their shareholders will not be happy!! Will anybody think of the shareholders?
wonder how they transfer money to pay for goods, send profit to HQ etc. Or are there so many loopholes still that sanctions dont really bite? >

In truth it's more the opposite. The war started and effective sanctions landed so hard and so fast that companies had no way to divest their assets and relocate. Abandoning their operations is basically the only way for most of them to leave, which would immediately trip off fraud and mismanagement claims (for publicly traded companies at least, or really want company with loans).
The article itself is kind of BS in that is using the most absolutist standard possible. Like a company that's closed their shop and still paying employees a stipend is still "doing business in Russia". When in truth most of them have shut down a lot, they just haven't turned the keys over to the new owner yet. Not like most of them can even find buyers to begin with.
There's a lot of complicating factors that IMO sensationalist articles deliberately avoid discussing. Because they want reactions like your own, where people think it's business as usual over there. It's not. Just kind of hard to tell the bank you have to stop paying your mortgage because you donated your collateral to charity and stopped working. >

But isn't that in so many words just proving the point? Like getting out would have been poor monetary decision (mismanagement) so that they're just staying in to keep making the most money? I get what your saying but I think the point is that if they said for moral and political reasons they would get out, they should get out regardless of taking the fiscal hit. Besides, I don't think the sec is going to grill any execs for getting out of Russia because of the war, that would look horrible. They don't even enforce their own policy int he states. >

As far as it goes with assets, at some point it is no longer the fiscal hit - you have compliance issues with audits on the value of the company. Asset management is complex - abandoning an asset has it's own host of issues far beyond fiscal, and that is just all on paper. And even if they did just do that, the paperwork and audits and other things to communicate and document that with investors or the bank and other institutions takes a lot of time under regular operations, never mind something that is as unusual as this. I'm not the deepest into financial asset management, only a couple of years in. But I've been learning that the whole "lets just get the deal done" is far more complicated than that. 
I'm not disagreeing that they should move out, absolutely and completely on moral and political motives, but these things take time, and it's only coming up to a year right now of this war. Relatively speaking, that's a short amount of time. There's just a lot of work that goes into these decisions, and some companies can do it quickly, some can do it shortly, and I suspect, many companies are learning how to handle it because they've never needed to do something like this before. But that said, we should be critical of companies that are in there, and keep monitoring their activities and hold them accountable - just need to take nuanced views on the why. >

Thank you for the great explanation! I was wondering how exactly a company might sell off its assets and shut down in a country where you can't easily get your money out of due to financial restrictions put on russia because of the invasion. 
Do you know of a way the president or SEC could put in place regulation exceptions for the situation in russia to make the process easier? Or if something similar has been done before? >

If no sanctions were put against Russia,most western companies who left would still be operating in Russia now. Those companies who closed their businesses left because they supply chain was disrupted by sanctions. Companies don't care about how many children are shelled. They care about profits. >

Corporations are not people.  
A corporation is a legal fiction that enables durable contracts that are not void upon death of the contracting party. 
That's it.  
Corporations only have one priority, "Maximize shareholder wealth". 
This is why Citizens United is bullshit. If a Corporation cannot be put in prison or electrocuted in Old Sparky at Huntzville, Texas, it is NOT a person.  
Corporations are amoral, profit-seeking mechanisms. No corporation would pull out of Russia as long as its shareholders could see returns for doing business there.  
And for those who haven't been paying attention, the 'investment class' is a bunch of amoral parasites as well.  
This is why Corporations must be forced to 'do the right thing' by making it a losing proposition for their shareholders to continue doing business in Russia. Therefore, sanctions.  
And Corporations (aka their managers and shareholders) will FIGHT sanctions, laws, taxes designed to obstruct their making profit-driven decisions that are evil. So that means we-the-people must insist our elected representatives fight back and make them happen. >

We really need to bring back criminal liability for corporate executives and board of directors. >

No chance that was ever implemented for even 10 seconds >

Bring back as in before corporations were a thing all business were proprietorships where the owners were legally responsible for their actions. Why not keep corporations but remove the limit to liability of it's owners/decision makers >

Something something RISK!! something something RED TAPE!! something something FREEDOM!! >

Well, I mean it would only be fair, right? After all, all those JOB CREATORS have to take all that RISK, which is why they get paid so much, right? >

Ah yes, the awful risk of having to sell their labor for a wage, just like the rest of us. >

The horror!! >

Expecting for-profit companies to voluntarily leave Russia is beyond stupid.
At the beginning of the war the US and EU should have banned trade with Russia but with a temporary excemption on natural gas because many EU countries were still dependent on Russian natural gas.
By now the only option is to ban all trade between the West and Russia. The uncomfortable truth is that "selective targeted sanctions" don't work. Only a complete stop on all trade between the West and Russia will significantly hurt the Russian economy. >

In fact many Western companies did voluntarily leave.  Praise those who did, shame those who didn't. >

Did they leave the US during American wars? :) >

Ooohhh edgy. >

Not really - if it's a matter of principles, as the OP is trying to portray, they would. >

I feel like you have the idea that if Americans do something wrong in the past that gives Russia the ability to do whatever they want now. Is that right? >

No, but having a consistent moral code means condemning both. Turns out invading countries and killing innocent people is bad! And it's an uncomfortable truth for some that America, like it or not, has a much longer and bloodier history of invading sovereign nations than most countries. >


No, but having a consistent moral code means condemning both. Turns out invading countries and killing innocent people is bad! And it's an uncomfortable truth for some that America, like it or not, has a much longer and bloodier history of invading sovereign nations than most countries.

The lack of critical thinking in display here is astounding. America is less than 300 years old but you genuinely believe this? Britain, France, Germany, any number of European countries obviously have longer and bloodier histories of invasion. This is pure recency bias. And this is why whataboutism is utterly useless because this is equally as irrelevant to what Russia is doing RIGHT NOW. >

Edgy teens really don't give a shit about reality, and if they're European they don't like to admit to their colonial past and the havoc their nations have caused. >

Not just not leaving, but also digging in...
Carl's Jr, Sbarro, Tom Ford, Valve, TGI Friday's... wait, Sbarro still exists? >

Every time Valve is brought up, I'd like to remind that Steam is basically a launcher at this point. Meanwhile Epic Games Store continues to operate as usual and accepts payments in rubles from Russian credit cards. >

Greed much? >

My company still runs a manufacturing branch within Russia. Of the “high ups” I’ve met I can tell you there’s absolutely no way in hell they’d shut anything down. For some there’s dollar signs and nothing else whatsoever.
Some companies get so big that the people who are in charge can pretend morals don’t matter anymore - like it’s a machine that runs on its own.