Leaving Russia has turned into a debacle for French companies, which, before the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, prided themselves on being the country's leading foreign employers. One name in particular was at the center of the drama: Danone. At the end of July 2023, just four days after the signing of a presidential decree ratifying the takeover of the food group's 12 factories, local leaders were greeted in their offices by Yakub Zakriev, the new de facto buyer and former Chechen minister of agriculture, nephew of the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
According to the Financial Times, Danone started talks to sell the assets to Mintimer Mingazov, a close associate of Kadyrov's nephew. This temporary "trusteeship," managed by Rosimushchestvo, the federal agency for state shareholdings, was seen by Western business leaders as a maneuver of outright expropriation, the result of a poorly negotiated departure by the French group, political considerations that are difficult to decipher and the voracious appetites of local players who know how to sense vulnerabilities.
Clearly, the fiasco showed that there is no guarantee of a successful departure, even if you play by the rules. Danone depreciated its Russian activities by €500 million in 2022, and a further €200 million in 2023.
Renault's experience was just as painful. At the end of the 20th century, the French group bought the Moskvitch factory in Moscow, then abandoned it before refitting and equipping it to assemble over 100,000 models a year from 2010. In 2008, it made a second acquisition, for €1 billion, of part of the capital of AvtoVAZ, the manufacturer of the Lada and owner of a huge plant in the heart of the "automobile valley" in the Samara Oblast in southwestern Russia.
Renault is paying off debts, finding new suppliers, laying off, rehiring and training. At the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Renault employed 45,000 people on site. On May 16, 2022, it decided to sell its first plant to the city of Moscow and its stake in the second to the state-run Central Research and Development Institute for Automobiles and Engines.
It is also writing off the company's second-largest market, after France in terms of volume, with a loss of €2.3 billion on its 2023 results. The ultimate snub: Russia's Minister of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov, later revealed that the two Renault entities were sold for 1 rouble (€0.01) each.
In 2006, Daniel Bouton, then head of Société Générale, saw Russia as "one of the most promising markets," before embarking on a series of acquisitions," including Rosbank. On April 11, 2023, the French bank announced that it would cease its activities altogether, citing a "difficult and painful decision." The withdrawal from Rosbank's capital was quickly completed, as Société Générale sold its shares to the oligarch Vladimir Potanin, from whom it had bought them a few years earlier for €4 billion. The transaction enabled the French bank to make an "orderly" exit from the Russian market. Orderly but costly: It will result in a net loss of €3.2 billion in the group's accounts.
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