and tyson fury will take on dillian whyte later — in what's expected to be one of the biggest all—british heavyweight fights in boxing history. now on bbc news... talking business. hello, everyone, and welcome to talking business weekly, with me, aaron heslehurst. let's talk about what is on the show. it is the great business retreat, more than 750 companies exit russia in response to putin's war in ukraine. but many still remain. will those making the stand really make a difference or is it more symbolic? i am going to find outjust how important these foreign brands are to the russians and their economy. i will be discussing all of that with these two experts, one who has been naming and shaming corporate in action, and one who has been helping companies make these big decisions. also on the show, mounting calls for a full embargo on russian energy. the boss of ukraine's biggest oil and gas company tells me why current sanctions don't go far enough. where ever you are joining from around the world, once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. you know, as the death and destruction continues in ukraine, much of the business world has been separating its world from putin's russia and their roubles. in fact, it is thought that over 750 global companies have reduced their operations, some moving quickly to the exit, some half in half out, but others are choosing to stay put. there are many reasons behind these decisions, but one thing is for sure, the moral compass of businesses under the spotlight like never before. here is the ukrainian president, president zelensky, explaining why to the us congress last month. translation: all american companies must leave russia immediately because it is flooded with our blood. ladies and gentlemen, members of congress, please take the lead, if you have companies in your districts who finance the russian military machine, leaving business in russia, you should put pressure, i am asking to make sure that the russians do not receive a single penny that they used to destroy people in ukraine. so, let's remind ourselves of what has been happening here. since the beginning of the invasion in late february, western sanctions have effectively shut russia out of large swathes of the global economy and some companies quickly followed suit. petrochemical giants like bp and exxonmobil led the way, announcing that they were severing joint russian ventures, costing them billions of dollars. payments companies like visa and mastercard suspended operations, and hollywood's disney and warner studios halted new releases into russia. tech giants like apple and google limited their services. then came the moves from a number of big professional services, firms like accenture, shutting down in russia and mckinsey�*s suspending operations. and then investment banks likejpmorgan and goldman sachs saying that they would begin winding down their operations in that country. the russian main street has been transformed with many western shops mothballed, as top brands pulled down their shutters. ben &jerry�*s and starbucks, halted the operations. and most symbolic, the closure of mcdonald's, a powerful emblem of an open post—soviet russia. many brands that didn't act quickly were slammed in the media, facing pressure from investors, online campaigns, and calls for consumer boycotts. one of the latest to feel the strain and make the move is the french luxury brand l'occitane. after weeks of pressure for choosing to keep trading, they recently made the call to close all of their russian shops and websites, citing the enormous human suffering and escalating military action in ukraine. others are facing a backlash claimed to be unable to pull out due to complex legal agreements which has left them wrestling with a sort of half exit. fast food icon burger king being a case in point, saying that they were unable to walk away from a russian franchise system, claiming their russian operator refused to shut outlets. butjust how important is foreign business and investment to the russian economy? in the scheme of things, russia is a relatively small global economy, with their total economic output for 2020 putting them just outside the world top ten, below south korea and just above brazil. and foreign investment, it is a relatively small part of that equation, accounting for less than i% of the economy in 2020. that number represents a significant full in international investment into russia since the annexation of crimea in 2014. the russian government has responded to this exodus with hostility, threatening to draft a law that would enable them to nationalise the assets of any foreign companies who choose to leave. but companies taking a stance on the issues of the day is a modern business reality. just take a listen to this reputational risk expert. it is a requirement to operate now, to have a stand, whether it is on corporate responsibility issues, whether it is on issues like the ukraine russian conflict right now, or something as simple as what they are doing in specific small communities to help that community. it is notjust about returns on investment any more. for some companies leaving russia, it is a relatively painless process. for others, it will be a much harder pill to swallow. some take the view that geopolitics is no place for business, as long as they abide by international law. but many of them are big international names and could face a significant blowback. so, who are the company is still operating in russia? to find out, i caught up with geoffrey sonnenfeld from yale university who has been compiling a list of some of the biggest household names, marking their action and inaction on leaving the russian market. geoffrey, a real pleasure having you on the show. thank you for your time. let's start with this. you and your team have been compiling this list of companies and their actions over the war in ukraine. just explain, how does it work? we have classified companies into five different categories. we are a school house at yale so of course we have letter grades as ourexpertise, a, b, c, d, e, and f. in the beginning, it was just a binary split of who is curtailing and who is not curtailing. and the reason is because we had so many sleazy pretenders who were coming along and acting like they were doing something but they really weren't. briefly, who are some of these names on the so—called bad list? one of them, i guess you would have to consider the us company koch industries, that makes some very prominent goods, toilet issues and things, but they have some other large divisions of glass—makers and a company that makes little connectors that go into every cell phones and airbus and boeing cockpits, the plastic pieces. they are digging in there, unperturbed. it is astounding that they continue on. and other companies like international paper that claim, oh, we are just a passive investment. the passive investment is 50% so it is a controlling stake in one of the largest paper companies in the world and is based in russia. many chinese companies such as huawei, there are noises that huawei might be changing a little bit soon, but alibaba and so many others that are in that category are sadly, even the laptop that i am on, lenovo is still digging in and operating there. do you have sympathy for what can be seen as legitimate difficulties for companies to withdraw? some will say they have got these complex legal entanglements. burger king would be one of those examples. it is interesting you picked a casual dining restaurants. there are places like starbucks that have the same franchise agreements as anybody else, starbucks had the courage and generosity to buy out their vendor is, out their franchisees. there is no reason why burger king or these others try that. you know, some will argue, is it really a moral position? for instance, to put people out of work. workers still have families to feed. it is putin's regime driving the war. some will argue it is not your average russian on the street. nobody should hold that position now because our number one enemy to global harmony and the well—being of ukraine's sovereignty and just their basic right to live is vladimir putin. but what a great historian reminds us in a book called hitler's willing executioners, 1996 book, is it wasn't adolf hitler himself that takes all the responsibility for the cruel success of the third reich when it was successful. it was the complacency of the russian, in that case, the german population. in this case, it is complicity through complacency of the russians. the more we keep these people content with jobs and cash and the economy flowing as normal, the less willing they are to question the true surround them. and the withdrawal of all of these companies, is itjust symbolic role will it have a big impact on the russian economy? it is very substantive. 800 have withdrawn. that's 25% of russia's gdp. that's apart from the economic sanctions. these business blockades. the stock market has plunged, we know that inflation is soaring there, thankfully even in the west and outside of the russia, we are looking at 35, 40% of inflation. where have we seen that before? it has been a long time. it is having demonstrable subsidy effects. geoffrey, what is your end goal? the ultimate goal, which nobody has ever asked before, it would be to have the russian people jump asked before, it would be to have the russian peoplejump out on asked before, it would be to have the russian people jump out on the streets. instead of hovering in fear and hiding from the truth. the world hasn't seen somebody who has this amount of power as putin that has this amount of power in a long time. it was said recently at one of our summits, this is the most dangerous person who ever walked the planet. surely not as bloody as hitler or genghis khan but given time. and unlike those other horrendous tyrants, they didn't have nuclear weapons, they didn't have a bottomless pit of oil money, so it is critical that we stop this government, stop this leader, and thatis government, stop this leader, and that is the goal of these business boycotts. they can't do business there. a prominent financier is said to us he is sorry he forgot his own golden rule which was never do business where it is the rule of leaders instead of the rule of law. geoffrey sonnenfeld, i appreciate your time, thank you very much for joining me, iwould your time, thank you very much for joining me, i would love to talk to you again soon. joining me, i would love to talk to you again soon-— staying on the subject of to leave or not to leave russia, i have been speaking to stephen fox, former us diplomat and now executive chairman and founder of... real pleasure having you with me and thanks for your time. can we start with this. i'm wondering what kind of conversations are you home with your clients over the russian exposure at the moment? i think we have moved to a second stage of conversation, in fact, in the first stages do we still do we go in the vast murthy said we go. —— fact, in the first stages do we still do we go in the vast majority said we go. now that we have gone it is a much longer—term process of thinking also the second and third order effects coming out of the whole russia—ukraine border. keep in mind this is the first war of the esg area and as a result of that there was tremendous perceptions about customer pressure and public sentiment and that sentiment said you need to be out of russia as a reaction to what took place. let's explain that. the esg, we are talking about an age where environmental, social and governance standards for companies and they are all very important. does that have more of an impact on a company's decision over russia and ukraine? we think it is having a tremendous impact in the sense that reputation risk is moved to the absolute fore in companies�* calculations and more so, not a worry about how much the financial loss might be from russia but what could be the financial loss from remaining in russia from customers who are based outside of russia, everywhere else in the world. stephen, talking of this balancing act, it is not just about your customer base and consumer backlash but of course also those all—importa nt investors. how difficult is that for companies to balance? interestingly, on the esg front, it was actually activist investors and shareholders who were pushing the esg agenda at the forefront so i think in this instance you have a complete alignment between esg investor interest and where companies believe their customers are in terms of sentiment with regard to russia and absolute disgust at the activities perpetrated by russia against ukraine. but, as you know, there is always that argument that the first duty of a company is to be profitable, to survive and exist. anything that deviates from that and increases costs etc isn't going to help anyone so it is all great, some will say, to have these good intentions but not if those intentions lead you to bankruptcy. sure, and it is important to do the appropriate financial calculations and there will be companies that suffer severe financial losses as a result of having to exit from russia in the wake of the war but at the same time these companies made the calculation and said, what's the cost of remaining? and part of that cost would be the idea of being branded as a putin sympathiser and that might be too high a price to bear. do you that that the russian invasion has fundamentally changed company strategies going forward? will they be looking at international markets and regimes they are operating with in a whole new light? yes, i believe so varying degrees but we used to describe and extend the geopolitical risk was a parlour game that once sat and contemplated and thought about it but it didn't have active consequences a company could really manage. those days are over and for sophisticated companies the time has come where it is not sitting around as a parlour game but rather trying to do appropriate scenario planning and looking at what are the second and third order effects of big geopolitical dislocations such as the russian invasion of ukraine. stephen fox, a real pleasure having you with me. thanks for your insight and i will talk to you soon. it is now over two months since putin's invasion began and it is quite a sobering thought that gas is still flowing from russia. it is possible to picture money flowing in the opposite direction, from european gas comes to the likes of gazprom and other energy providers. critics say that money funds putin's war in ukraine. just how do you interrupt that money flow? i have been speaking to the ceo of ukraine's largest gas company to find out. thanks for your time and i am sorry it is in these circumstances. can you give me a sign of how bad the ongoing damage is being inflicted on this ukrainian company's infrastructure because of the attacks? our infrastructure in the eastern part of ukraine and southern parts of ukraine is not just damaged, it is destroyed. the damage is enormous. then we, part of our business is to transport and oil products and russians targeted it deliberately so we had huge explosions and, again, big parts of our infrastructure were destroyed, due to this, again, very targeted attacks. but this infrastructure damage cannot be compared with the humanitarian catastrophe that we see now in ukraine and we operate basically all over ukraine and we provide, for example, heating for 90% of ukrainians because natural gas is the source of energy for ukrainians. and i cannotjust even express how sad we feel again hearing all this story and watching our customers, watching families of our employees dying or being left without critical supplies. that is something that is really, really terrible. the biggest risk is that this war continues and we cannot repair the infrastructure when there is an ongoing fight and it is, also, it is a matter of sometimes investments, sometimes really need to rebuild it from scratch so it takes years to rebuild the infrastructure that has been damaged recently. and you've been quoted as saying that germany, instead of getting its gas from russia directly through what is called the nord stream i pipeline, should have it piped via ukraine and this, you say, will give an incentive to stop the war and make sure that the transit routes are secure but, i've got to ask you this. is it realistic to think that germany would choose to make its gas supplies more vulnerable? in general, we believe and we are public about it, that there should be a full embargo on russian oil and gas but if germany says that they are so critically dependent on russian gas who, by the way, we don't believe that is the case, we believe they can stop buying russian gas and the damage to the german economy will be very, very modest, but it will, again, stop the war but if they still get this natural — again, stop the war but if they still get this russian gas they should be getting it through ukraine just to first of all show some solidarity with ukraine but also to give additional incentive to putin and russia incentive to putin and russia to stop the war and not to completely destroy ukraine and ukrainian infrastructure. would you go as far as saying the likes of germany and other european nations are helping to fund putin's war in your country? every day putin's killing machine is getting $1 machine is getting $1 billion from europe and energy exports, oil products, natural gas. recently, a top european diplomat yosef burrell even himself confessed that since the beginning of the war europe has paid 35 billion euros to russia for energy while it provided only 1 billion euros to ukraine as assistants, so 35 times they pay to putin to kill ukrainians, so that is why it is of utmost importance to stop this cash flow, to stop putin, not to make him stronger, so that he can continue conquering other countries, invading other countries, killing people. a full embargo on russian energy. would that stop the war? and how soon do you think it could stop it? i believe that it will be a crushing sanction that the west was talking about, so that would stop the war because russia willjust start running out of money and they will also see how serious the west is to stop russia from invading independent countries. you have described russia's gasprom as putin's favourite geopolitical tool disguised as the world's largest gas company. back in 2019 in paris you negotiated with putin face—to—face. what did you take from that encounter? it was mr putin who negotiated on behalf of gazprom even though the ceo was a living. it was mr putin who negotiated on behalf of gazprom even —— though the ceo was in the room. secondly, putin was on top of all the details. sometimes at least, he was bluffing and he was projecting this kind of, i don't know, alpha male image that was supposed to impress us all to make us agree with his arguments and when you confront him, when you are not afraid of him, when you also can have these negotiations from the position of strength, then you get what you want because, in this particular case, what we wanted, so we made him pay and we made him sign a new contract. so my experience with putin is that he understands only this language of power, language of strength, and you have to confront him and be prepared to do what you are telling him you will do if he doesn't want to do what you want him to do and only then you reach the desired outcome. you know your president and president zelensky through working with him. he used to be a comedian and used to work on television. how would you say she has changed over the period you have known him? he changed a lot, especially over the last months. it seems like he gained 20 years or something like that. he could not remember his age the last time we spoke but he remembered all the days of this war but he is also he was always good at feeling what ukrainians feel and want, that was hisjob, by the way, but now by the way, but now he is also much more of a statesman than he used to be and, yes, let's see and develops because there is a huge burden now on his shoulders. iwish him, again, even luch to some extent. i wish ukraine luch but this change that is ongoing with him is making him stronger. thank you for your time. i really appreciate it. good luck with everything and i will check in with the same. thank you, goodbye. don't forget you can get the latest updates on the war on ukraine and the impact it is having our global economy on the bbc website or smartphone app. you can also follow me on twitter. tweet me and i will tweet you back. you get me at... hello, again. well, the weekend's got off to a pretty decent start weather—wise. for the vast majority, it's been a dry day. there've just been one or two showers dotted around here and there. but some sunshine for most of us — that was edinburgh castle, overlooking the blossoms there in the gardens below. now, the satellite picture. to the north of the uk and the north atlantic we've got a big bank of low cloud, and that is going to be coming towards the uk into next week, but before we get there, today we have had some cloud, particularly across wales and western areas of england, and that cloud has produced one 01’ two showers. now, they'll fade away but we could see another batch just running into the south of england for a time overnight. away from that, cloudy again for northern scotland, but for most it's a dry night with clear skies. temperatures getting down to between 3 and 7 celsius, perhaps a few areas of frost and some of the deeper valleys in scotland. now, for the second half of the weekend, it's another fine—looking day. lots of sunshine around, both morning and afternoon, and i think overall there'll be fewer showers, so that the vast majority of you will have a dry day. still pretty cloudy across the far north of scotland, but otherwise sunny spells. now, again, we've got these east—north—easterly winds working across the chilly waters out in the north sea where the sea temperatures are onlyjust coming up from their wintertime low, and that does have an effect on the temperatures. for eastern areas, 11 to 1a degrees. the highest temperatures, again, across the south and west — we're looking at highs of 18 in cardiff and for london. for monday, still a fair bit of dry weather but we are going to see some showers across central and eastern england. some of those could turn out to be quite heavy for a time during the afternoon. away from that, though, a fair bit of dry weather, but it's starting to turn cloudy and cool across northern areas of scotland. 10 degrees in stornoway, 11 in aberdeen. in the sunshine further south, 14s and 15s. for the most part, tuesday is where we see that big area of low cloud i showed you on the satellite picture. well, that works down the north sea and then starts to spread inland, so quite a bit of dry weather still around, but quite a lot of cloud, as well, and given the cloudy skies, just 9 degrees in aberdeen and newcastle, highest temperatures 15—16 for cardiff and for london, but, really, the rest of the week does look pretty cloudy at times. temperatures not as high as they have been. the best of any limited sunshine will be across western areas. that's the latest. this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. our top stories... ukraine says at least five people have been killed — and 18 injured — by a series of russian missile strikes on the strategic port city of odesa. campaigning ends in france's hard—fought presidential election — with emmanuel macron and his far—right rival marine le pen urging people to turn out and vote on sunday. 26 passengers and crew are missing injapan after a tourist boat reportedly sinks off the northern island of hokkaido.

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