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McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

corporate.mcdonalds.com

361–370 of 394 posts

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#361

Can you sell the Russian business without violating the sanctions?

Russian social media are full of winking posts hinting that McDonald's will sell operations to a Russian company which it will still profit from "behind the scenes" (via offshore proxy or some other indirect way). They also hint that this will pave the way for other Western companies currently in limbo: split ownership between controllable proxy and Russian owner. And at the same time shout in Bloomberg how much you…

Thats what GM(opel), IBM(dehomag) and Coca-Cola(fanta) did during WW2 in Germany. But I have a feeling it wont fly nowadays with social media and politicians hungry for grandstanding, especially in light of recently passed second Lend-Lease.

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#362
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scale of these delusions can only match the scale of Putin's delusions. How detached from real life should one be to reason about people as though they were homo economicus , pathetic humanoid consumers? Linking “brands” to “civilization” is just a widespread publicist cliche that is only observed in various “analysis” in media. When you look at what people actually did, there is no trace of such feeling. Those w…

this is pure copium and old fashioned antimodernist ranting. if it helps you sleep at night, great, but it wont work on everyone. some people dont appreciate their nation becoming north korea 2.0

I wonder what made you think that criticizing current media spectacle is synonymous with supporting anything in Russian retrograde political system going on full steam into a dead end.

The “New North Korea!” journalistic chant also explains too little. What's more important, it is a smokescreen to hide the obvious: history repeats itself. When USSR discovered oil and gas, got drunk on them, and slowly rot for two decades while madly waving guns at the other half of the world, it formed quite stable relationship with Europe. With enough “Soviets BAD!” statements “democratic West” could easily turn the blind eye to a lot of things (including deviations from global sanctions) to keep the pipelines running. Putin might not be the best James Bond, but he worked abroad and had the general idea how those deals were prepared and made. You might have noticed that fairly recently Western Europe was also ready to start using Nord Stream 2 (and give the giant middle finger to Eastern Europe because, you know, peculia non olet) despite all the pressure from US — it was the genius of Russian leadership starting Ukranian Blitzkrieg right at the same time that buried the project.

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of the countries that you have listed depend on Russia economically to the same extent as on the West, or in greater fashion. "Let them be neither" does not work, as demonstrated by the NATO expansion.

Countries can have a booming trade without being a client state. You are under the misapprehension that 1) A small country must make itself subservient to a larger more powerful one. And 2) It cannot have close ties with more than one large world power. Germany for example has very strong economic interests with both the US & Russia, and until the Ukrainian invasion there wasn't too much of a problem with that. The U…

Kazakhstan has at least threeway close ties and it does not cause problems. They are also not subservient. They're just profiting from having stable relations with larger neighbours.

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#364
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian social media are full of winking posts hinting that McDonald's will sell operations to a Russian company which it will still profit from "behind the scenes" (via offshore proxy or some other indirect way). They also hint that this will pave the way for other Western companies currently in limbo: split ownership between controllable proxy and Russian owner. And at the same time shout in Bloomberg how much you…

Ruble is definitely not much stronger, it’s just practically frozen so it is not defined by free market rules, but by Russian government made ones.

Russian here. You have no point, check any exchange, in case of the accessibility Binance p2p There was growing black market exchange once ruble fallen to the 115ish to usd, and the spread was about 20%, so you could buy green cash at 150ish, but since then those exchanges shrinked.

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#365
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruble is definitely not much stronger, it’s just practically frozen so it is not defined by free market rules, but by Russian government made ones.

I have seen a lot of people write this but I don't understand how. Shouldn't there be a black market rate in that case? Is there one? Some quick Googling gave no articles.

There are black markets in the form of Telegram chats and bots where people exchange cash. They aren't so necessary right now because certain limitations have been lifted and while it's not easy, you can buy cash USD or send wires to other countries.

There are two things holding the ruble high: 1. All exporters have to sell 80% of their FX income in 3 days 2. The import has shrunk dramatically and it's hard for people to travel to other countries (so individuals and businesses don't need that much cash to begin with)

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think McDonalds & Co are such a big health-negative in other countries as it is in the US. I've never met someone who's obese from eating Maccas in Sweden, they're obese because they eat more calories than they burn. Calling a food unhealty is quite silly to me, anything is unhealty if you consume it in unhealty amounts. The above statements obviously exclude things like cyanide and other things designed to k…

>Calling a food unhealty is quite silly to me, anything is unhealty if you consume it in unhealty amounts. >The above statements obviously exclude things like cyanide and other things designed to kill humans, I'd call them lethal. How about sugar...? https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM

You need sugar to live as far as I know, you hardly need cyanide to live. You're comparing apples to oranges.

PS: I'm not watching and hour 30m long video for you to get your point through, excessive sugar is bad yes (if that's your point).

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#367
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruble is definitely not much stronger, it’s just practically frozen so it is not defined by free market rules, but by Russian government made ones.

Russian here. You have no point, check any exchange, in case of the accessibility Binance p2p There was growing black market exchange once ruble fallen to the 115ish to usd, and the spread was about 20%, so you could buy green cash at 150ish, but since then those exchanges shrinked.

[deleted]

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#368
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruble is definitely not much stronger, it’s just practically frozen so it is not defined by free market rules, but by Russian government made ones.

Russian here. You have no point, check any exchange, in case of the accessibility Binance p2p There was growing black market exchange once ruble fallen to the 115ish to usd, and the spread was about 20%, so you could buy green cash at 150ish, but since then those exchanges shrinked.

It's actually 64 RUB per USD, Tinkoff bank sells for 67 for example. Compare to 78 pre-war. This week Central Bank lifted another restrictions and you can get up to $50k out of the country. I think unfortunately Americans drank Biden's lying kool-aid of "devastating sanctions" and happily looked away prematurely.

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#369
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruble is definitely not much stronger, it’s just practically frozen so it is not defined by free market rules, but by Russian government made ones.

I have seen a lot of people write this but I don't understand how. Shouldn't there be a black market rate in that case? Is there one? Some quick Googling gave no articles.

Where do you get that? You can actually buy dollars in Moscow from banks. Everything is mostly back to normal or even better (retail banks sell dollars cheaper than pre-war levels). There was a brief panic and tight controls in anticipation of more severe sanctions but they never came.

Re: McDonald’s to Exit from Russia

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen a lot of people write this but I don't understand how. Shouldn't there be a black market rate in that case? Is there one? Some quick Googling gave no articles.

There is not much use for dollars in Russia right now other than hoarding them (you can buy goods, but many imports are sanctioned). And after initial panic subsided, trust in the banking system looks quite high so people are less keen on hoarding cash. Also, if you are an oligarch who plans to load your private plane with suitcases of dollars and fly to the Cayman islands, you are probably sanctioned, so that is out…

No problem flying to Dubai to Istanbul and using their banking system. Actually most of Russian and Belarussian elite are happily using it. You can meet all kinds of adult kids of Lukashenko, Yanukovich there or an odd Russian silovik.
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