Finnish parliament drops Pepsi as fallout continues from its addition to international sponsors of war list
Finnish parliament drops Pepsi as fallout continues from its addition to international sponsors of war list
The Finnish parliament will no longer carry Pepsi products as the American soft drink giant continues to support the Russian economy by continuing its operations in the aggressor country, Finnish news outlet Yle reported on Sept. 5, citing the manager of the parliament’s restaurant.
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Again: The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund still have active investments in Russia.
Where is the outrage for them?
According to this Norwegian publication in an article published January 31st 2023:
the Norwegian oil fund still holds hundreds of millions worth of shares in petroleum companies like Gazprom, Novatek, Bashneft and Lukoil
Even if the value of their investments lower, they still haven’t pulled out any from Russia. The investments could be worth very little, but they still have something invested in Russia.
Norwegian Government on February 28, 2022, ordered the Oil Fund to freeze all investments in Russia and prepare a plan for divesting with the goal of totally exiting the Russian stock market
What’s stopping them?
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The value of their investments is lower because they've been pulling out of Russia. The article you sent says they've slashed the value down by 90%, and they're still going. Liquidating hundreds of millions in stocks while getting a decent value out of them takes time, and so far they've done a pretty good job selling off 90% of their Russian holdings with just a few more millions to go
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Let’s break down that January 31, 2023 article once more:
1: The investments in Moscow listed equities dropped from $2.7 billion to a mere $300 million.
It would be laughably naive to think this is purely because they've been 'pulling out' of Russia. By all means, review the article and let me know if it states the exact reason for the decrease in value.
2: By December 31, 2022, Norway still had shares in 51 Russian companies.
It's September 2023. If they were aggressively pulling out, wouldn't they have zero investments by now?
Nice try.
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Making rapid economical changes in this scale will collapse companies and economies.
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Who would collapse?
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sugar drinks could be compramised over living in the freezing cold
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How would the richest sovereign wealth fund in the world pulling out their investments from Russia bring about living in the freezing cold?
It isn’t as if Norway’s fund haven’t already said they would divest. It’s just that they haven’t taken any concrete action on what they promised for more than a year.
Why?
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I mean, the US has been helping Saudi Arabia starve and destroy Yemen for eight years now. Aren't we also a sponsor of war?
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We're a key part of the war machine. We are gears of war.
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Gears of war only has 4 sequels...
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Doesn't count since we're the good guys.
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well, yes?
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Yes.
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Those are the Good guys, Gods gift to humanity, they dictate what is moral and what ever harm they bring on others they are still righteous
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The title is incredibly hard to understand.
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It's not ideal.
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Also:
- Don't import Coke from Mexico--the anchor bottler also has a stake in Heineken (soup)
- Don't drink Dr. Pepper until Mondelez quits Russia or DPS
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Mondelez is way more than DP. Brands under Mondelez include
Cadbury
Grenade
Halls
Oreo
Among others:
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Heineken recently sold all of their Russian assets
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Just Mexico?
So European coke is okay?
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Finnish parliament will no longer carry Pepsi products as the American soft drink giant continues to support the Russian economy by continuing its operations in the aggressor country, Finnish news outlet Yle reported on Sept. 5, citing the manager of the parliament’s restaurant.
Pepsi products that had already been received have been removed from the shelves.
Earlier, MP Tuomas Kettunen demanded that the parliament building stop selling Pepsi products.
Pepsi and Mars were added to the international sponsors of war list on Sept. 1 by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) for continuing to operate in Russia after the invasion and continuing to pay taxes to the aggressor state’s budget.
Earlier, the media reported that Mondelez, Mars, and PepsiCo recorded a significant increase in sales in Russia in 2022.
The original article contains 131 words, the summary contains 131 words. Saved 0%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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Now this is nice
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I have a genuine question that maybe somebody with more economic knowledge can educate me in:
How is continuing the sale in Russia helping Russia? As I understand Russia is gaining money on the sales taxes, etc. but the rest of the earnings will go to the US parent company, which cannot be taxed directly by Russia. If Pepsi backs out, wouldn't operations just be replaced by a rebranded russian company, where all of the earnings would be under russian "sphere of influence"?
I genuinely do not understand why Pepsi backing out is considered bad for Russia. I thought countries generally prefer national companies over foreign ones.
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Because Pepsi doesn't just manifest out of nowhere in Russia. They are brining need for supplies, transportation, repair, maintenance etc.
In other words economic movement and income for the country.
Could some other fully Russian company take over the same thing? Maybe, but not without startup investment and knowledge. All of that isn't free, and if an economy is unstable, no-one is going to commit money into it.
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Could some other fully Russian company take over the same thing?
That's how Fanta became a thing after Coca Cola withdrew from Germany in WWII.
Using that example, yeah there's an economic cost to doing that. They may not be able to get the ingredients they could get before and would have to do some work in coming up with a new recipe with the ingredients they have available. Figure out supply chains for the new ingredients, all that kind of thing.
Also consider what happened with Fanta after the war. Coca Cola returned to Germany and resumed ownership of their bottling plants. "Oh people actually like this Fanta thing you came up with while we were gone? Yeah that's cool... we own that now."
How much is someone going to invest in a company that is operating in a bottling plant owned by Pepsi, who may return and take it all over again after Putin is gone?
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Maybe, but not without startup investment and knowledge. All of that isn't free, and if an economy is unstable, no-one is going to commit money into it.
At least the knowledge is already there. Pepsi is not going to take the workers in Russia away with them. And as far as I know the investment is mostly the cost of buying the assets from the western company. For example the russian McDonalds branch just reopened with a new name at the same locations.
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Your question is basically "why are embargoes effective"
Collectively shunning an economy cripples it, and it's most effective when widely adopted.
Pepsi should be ashamed of their actions.
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My question was more specific than that. I absolutely understand why it is important to sanction high-tech products and stop Russia from exporting their goods.
But western companies selling non-critical goods inside Russia felt more like russian economic dependancy to western companies to me, which (for me as a layman when it comes to economy) seemed preferable to Russia having an independent economy. Thats where my question came from.
Now I realized that rather than "dependant economy" or "independant economy" the intended goal in this case is "no economy", although i am doubtful whether that will really work.
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You’re right, it doesn’t matter.
A sanctioning country can get good results from doing its thing to a sanctioned country when the stuff being sanctioned is important to their development. That’s why the us wants to keep 5g chips out of chinas hands.
E: touching finger to ear I’m receiving reports this did not work at all.
A set of sanctions doesn’t matter when the thing that’s being kept out of the sanctioned country’s hands isn’t important. So naturally when in a war no one cares about specific brands of soda or fast food. Pepsi executives saw what happened to McDonald’s and stayed in.
People will say things like “it hurts their economy” and “it makes the people unhappy”. The American experience of war is so completely different than almost every other nationality that they think that makes sense, and the American experience of a war economy is so far beyond the cultural memory that it only reenforces the idea that specific brands of soda matter in wartime.
So basically you’re right, what Pepsi does doesn’t matter. But if we as consumers of Pepsi outside the conflict wished it had a better policy, one that put its weight on the scale to end the fighting, we should wish for it to stop supplying both nations and perhaps even any nation directly supporting either one.
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Maybe Im dense but why does the Finnish government carry a soda anyway?
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Because the building has a staff cafeteria and a restaurant, as one would expect from an office space of that size.
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At least here in the Finnish defense forces all conscripts can buy Pepsi from soda machines. Iirc some government events/buildings have had Pepsi too
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This international sponsors of war thing really should only apply to companies based in countries that have sanctioned Russia - if you're not operating against sanctions, the onus isn't with the company (which could be sued for contract violations) but with the government for not placing sanctions.
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It used to be that Coca-Cola and Pepsi divided the sides in the Middle East between them (one sold their product in Israel, and was banned in much of the Arab world, which the other took). Now history may be repeating itself with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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This is almost as dumb as Freedom Fries.
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Is freedom fries a real thing? I always thought it was a joke, but I'm not American.
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Yes. In 2003 The US Congress changed the wording of its cafeteria menu because France opposed the invasion of Iraq.
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They have a duty to try and maximize the return on investment for their stakeholders. Dumping all of their stock on the market at once would crater the value of those holdings. In the end the only people who would benefit would be those who picked up that stock cheap (probably the Russian Oligarchy). It would also greatly harm the Sovereign fund due to the losses incurred.
Selling off holdings slowly to try and minimize losses for the sovereign fund is the logical move.