Mondelez’s CEO said investors do not “morally care” whether companies continue to do business in Russia, and that the company’s own shareholders had not pressured the chocolate maker to leave the country after its invasion of Ukraine.
“I don’t think [investors] morally care . . . ” Dirk Van de Put said in an interview with the Financial Times, but he added, “if you have an important Russian business, the hit on the company would be huge, and that becomes a different discussion”.
Mondelez’s Russian business contributed 2.8 per cent of its global revenues in 2023, down from 4 per cent in 2022. “There has been no shareholder pressure whatsoever,” Van de Put said, adding that a handful of funds in Europe had asked some questions about the business, “but there was no request to leave Russia from any of our investors”.