Amid the war between Russia and Ukraine, UK's Finance Minister Rishi Sunak has urged British corporations to stop investing in Russia in a video address posted on Twitter on March 13. In the tweet, Sunak has also applauded the decisions of some companies, like BP, Shell as well as Aviva, M&G and Vanguard, to withdraw from Russian holdings.
These sanctions have resulted in significant writedowns of Russian assets, with BP's decision to sell 20% of its stake in Russia's state-owned oil company Rosneft costing it up to $25 billion.
Further, BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm with more than $10 trillion in assets under management, has lost $17 billion on Russian bonds. On behalf of clients, it administers more than $18 billion in Russian assets, which were frozen on February 28.
Given market conditions and the capacity to sell assets due to worldwide sanctions imposed on the
Russian economy, the UK government acknowledged that certain corporations may find winding down their positions to be a long-term process. In addition, earlier UK imposed penalties on 386
members of Russia's lower house of Parliament who voted to recognise the independence of Ukraine's separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the run-up to the full-scale invasion.
