Topic: Putin is trying to coerce firms into doing business or else... (Read 459 times)

If you don't wish for any foreign firm in your nation and wants all firms in your country to be owned by your citizens, the world will just boycott your market and this will lead to economic crisis due to total isolation. Putin has gone the extreme to keep the glory of Russia.

Putin is not realising that even the oil that he thinks he has has been the only last choice he had but is never enough to bye pass the sanction else he uses bitcoin as a currency for exchange because Rubble is no where to be found anyone. And talking about renewable energy, there's a plan i believe yet unleashed and before you know it they will cut off the tie with Russia and make use of their renewable energy source.

That is true- even if the Russian government seizes the property of these businesses, I doubt that they would be able to function well. Since most of these Western companies and businesses have pulled-out their businesses/products in Russia, Putin is actually in chaos with its finances. Eventually, he will feel the effects of this war and in due course stop it.

I doubt where this pride of Putin will take him. Businesses are the lifeline of the country- without any proper circulation of cash, they will eventually yield to extreme measures.

Those companies can be used for anything, almost anything other than actually helping the people of Russia.

They can be used to siphon money from the government in subsidies, they can be used to purchase overpriced goods for other companies run by oligarchs, they can be used to import stuff from countries that are not joining the sanctions and they can also be used to launder money in foreign countries. You set up a company in Dubai for example, this company on paper sends goods worth 3 million to some "private" company in Russia and it gets paid for it, there was actually no delivery but suddenly this foreign company is full of cash and can make purchases outside with the "profits".

These strategies are as old as the USSR, despite the propaganda about the average Russian managing without western stuff the first ones to crack will be the ones in the government, they won't give up their lifestyle and they will try to find any way to get their beloved stuff.

And companies like these who on the surface will look totally clean are the perfect excuse.
Do they need to replace the ovens at McPutin? it will cost the same as previously but they will buy the cheapest junk available on aliexpress and two SUVs $200k that will be used for...doing business stuff.


He is right a bit about that, it can be installed in a few months but you can't manufacture that many in just a few months.
Europe has an installed wind capacity of ~200 GW with just ~18 installed last year. You will need to install 6 times the total capacity or 80 times what you have done last year to replace fossil fuel.

There is no way all the factories in the world would be able to produce that in 5 years, let alone in 5 months.

But there are a couple of nuclear powerplants that could be restarted in time

Russia being an oil rich country, even the western nations that are against Russia keeps the oil imports. The sanctions have affected the economy very bad. With the usage of cryptocurrency governments and the people managed to surviv  mn e. As an immediate effort to recover the inflation of ruble Putin have revealed statement, all countries not in the friend list of Russia to pay for oil in the form of ruble. Putin have given order to the banking authorities to take care of the arrangements to provide ruble for them.

Putin have been making big plans to recover the economy. Only the usage of renewable energy can make sanction more effective, because Putin have well understood the need of oil. So, in someway he'll bring in the money.

Nationalization is very bad. I don't remember a single example where it had any success. Having stolen technologies and equipment, success will last until the breakdown of this equipment, because no one will bring spare parts. In the future, many companies will not want to go to this country. And all high-quality European products will be forced to be replaced by Chinese waste products. It is unfortunate that ordinary citizens will suffer greatly from this.

What are you talking about bruh... you do not seem to have a clue about the costs, timeframes and investment requirements of the different types of energies. Solar can be installed by any decent sparky starting a 2000 USD, a wind turbine and generator of a mid size can be installed in a couple of months starting at around 200k.

The installations to extract petroleum and refine it require billions and take years.

To launder money, one needs to have money. Russia will have trouble finding any, quite soon. This can actually be a good thing because it can place some motivation into corrupt Russian officials and oligarchs. After all, they're used to luxury, and these sanctions are making it less and less possible. So I'm not sure how the schemes with making money would really work in Russia. Of course, there'll still be relatively wealthy people vs very poor people, but the riches are now losing a lot in Russia, not to mention that they won't be able to travel to their top Western destinations and use their European villas any time soon.

Not easy to wrap my head around it when there's laundering involved. I suppose Putin can reward his cronies with these expropriated assets and then they'll be the ones to launder money for him and maybe smuggle goods in, so it can't be all traced back to him?

Unfortunately it takes a long time to build any energy source. You want wind turbines? Takes a long time to manufacture it and put it in the right place and let it start earning you money, you want solar? You have to get them and install them and let them start working.

The great part about oil is that it takes even longer and I hope it ends very quickly because oil is not the way to go, we need to cut oil usage as low as possible if we can. In this regard I believe that Russia could definitely deal with wind turbines and nuclear that would still allow them to make insane amount of profit, they have enough base for that to start, they may not be doing economically great, but they have enough money.

Current Russia is heading towards 90s, where factories, business, manufactures were nationalized or bought for a promise, bottle of vodka, taken by force or by document forgery. Expect new Berezovsky, Abramovich and other new oligarchs to appear close to 2030. With all that sanctions, the world is doing Russia a favor.

I think this is only a retaliatory move by Putin to get back at the EU and US for the sanctions. It is in the news that Biden is looking out for 50 Russian elites and businesses to sanction. So Putin is probably serving back the delicacy given to him back



https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/03/16/russia-oligarchs-sanctions-treasury/

You are not getting it: if it takes a year, who pays the government salaries in Russia that year? How does the military replenish that year?

But the main problem is that it does NOT take a year, it takes many years of research, investment (which will be lacking in Putin's Russia) and formation. If you are interested, you should learn more about the modern oil industry. The companies that finance that for VP and the companies that know how to undertake the CAPEX and OPEX operations will not be there for him either.

Making money? Yeah!
The companies themselves don't actually make a real profit like a real company, but because the costs are subsidized by the state, the state cuts their taxes, waives any other tax on work or welfare contribution to the budget, making the cost with the workforce go down, exempting companies from rent and so on and on.

One clear example is PDSVA, the petroleum company of Venezuela, profitable because it has lower running costs, using its money to buy assets outside and using the money to pay a ton of Maduro's cronies. In the case of Russia of course it won't be that simple but it will still not stop them to start a shell company in a country that doesn't sanction them and using it as a mule for both acquiring stuff and laundering money, of course, all of this extra work involved will be paid by the population and every single steps put proportionally more pressure on the economy. Putin as a former KGB knows this too well, all the countries in the Comecon tried to use 3rd world (non-aligned) countries in order to get stuff that they wouldn't normally be able to get.

That's likely what's going to happen. I live in a country that was under a dictatorship for a time and that's what they usually do after purging privately owned sectors. Still, assuming he cronies can run this place, would the money they'd be able to make from the local market even be enough to still buy assets abroad, considering how low the ruble has dropped, plus these friends are also getting targeted by sanctions?

Seized the assets from the company will not make the company to feel bad because the documents of those assets are still with the company which other companies cannot buy those assets from Putin. The taxes Putin imposed to the company will not  help the company to make a good profit and still pay their workers which the Putin was aware but he just wants to distract the company from the country.

People do not realize that the price is already going down. It will keep being like this for a long time but oil prices weren't 10$ before this war started neither. Just let the prices go up, and make it expensive and that will promote clean energy a lot better. We all know that clean energy has only 2 problems, aside from that they are much better for everyone both economically and also helps the world.

One of the problems is that storing it is hard, not impossible but hard, and that makes it difficult, but if everyone starts using solar panels on their roofs, then it would be a great start. Secondly it is expensive to start, and this is where oil prices matter. If the oil prices are high, then spending that high money on solar instead could help out a lot.

What Putin can do, is what every dictator does based on his criteria, is simply to seize the infrastructure and make it work as if nothing were happening, obviously the international market was closed to Putin, but he has the full support of of the Chinese, not only for aid in the war, they must also have treaties that are economic in style, and China knowing that in some way an entire American hegemony is being attacked, they will not hesitate to support Russia, this is something that everyone understands, is something that China will not miss, especially now that there are high levels of inflation in the US. Putin knows that if he intimidates the companies, they will not leave Russia, and they will even have many benefits in some way, and Putin knows that the economy cannot be stopped, these are the measures that cannot get out of his hands.

Now that it did happen then pretty much sure that impressions would be lasting forever and would really leave out some scar which would mind off that they shouldnt get involved nor run off a business on this domain
or particular country on which the risk on having that kind of situation would be most likely to happen.Dictatorship kind of act is something really bad to look at and mandating around the domain is something not
that good if businesses would tend out to close its doors.If its been forcefully make them operational then those business firms wouldnt be having no choice considering that they have threats on confiscating everything
plus putting up on jail those executives.

Yes, I also made a similar comment on one thread that was talking about how Russia will be able to recover after every sanction, and the possibility of it. There isn't any way at all that they will be able to easily recover from the economic crackdown that they are facing right now.

Even if they should try, it is not going to be easy because there is no money that is coming from outside into the country, everything has been blocked and it is now just Russia on its own. Even if there are countries that would patronize them at this time it’s just going to be a few countries. As it stands, a lot of countries around the world has completely turned their back on Russia.

Doesn't matter in the slightest that it takes time. There are two things that could be done, first of all you could start right now and it will take a year before you can get the most out of a place and meanwhile let the gas prices be high during that time, or you could use the ones that we already had someone working on and put subsidiaries on it and get them paid a lot more and basically tax payers money would go to lowering the price of gas.

All in all it is sad that it happened after 2+ years of pandemic, so we are reaching to 2+ years of economical chaos around the world. But, it certainly is a better feeling than depending on Russia at all times.

Of course, because socialist ideas only work in the heads of the socialists. A chain has its own suppliers and contracts with many companies. It doesn't have a cleaning lady that does the job but there's a contractor that comes at night and cleans everything, it does not have some guy to change the bulbs but a contractor that manages whole electric equipment in the building. It can offer employees certain benefits, gift cards, private healthcare, savings plans. If you take a chain restaurant and give it to some private guy even a very eager and honest person it's not going to work as efficiently and be able to offer food as cheap as the chain did.

Putin probably doesn't want to give anything to the people. He wants the state to own it all like in the Soviet Union which is his idealized world of dreams.

Judging for Putin's usual modus operandi, he will seize the assets, give them to one of his mafia bosses oligarchs to open a local version (McPutin or Vladpple) and get his cut of the business to buy more flats in London, a larger palace or a couple of islands or archipelagos that he fancies.

He can get very creative and quite persuasive when he wants to take someone else's stuff as you can see right now in Ukraine.

Just used McDonalds since I don't know what other foreign brands have presence in Russia but I suppose there's still the problem of seizing their assets - how do you liquidate it if no one outside is going to buy it?

As for it deterring business, yes it'll have that effect. He could have just shut his mouth. Maybe there would be still some who might come in and do business. But since he dropped the E word, they might have second thoughts about doing business in such a country.

This is similar to what happened in Venezuela where they seized the private sectors businesses, they go inside establishments and take them, giving it to the people. A very bad wrong move, it gave them income, a profit to the government, created jobs, butd now they are destabilize. I wonder how's the case for NK, where they are deprive of these products and services in the first place, they've manage to lived but I don't call it living with such control.

This guy is really starting to do some crazy stuffs that I least expected him to do. He's trying to turn this into something that is bigger than what it is currently. I was expecting that by now this situation would have been something that is totally over. But, I’m surprised that they are still dragging this issue till now and doesn’t want to put an end to it. And what saddens me the most is that people that suffers the most from this war are the poor innocent civilians.

The rich ones can easily leave the country and relocate to a better place, while the poor will just continue to stay there and desperate. Despite they are innocent, they will still suffer from it, suffering from a poor decision that was made by their leader.

I think that if Putin's dominance continues in Russia this will be an obstacle for investors to be able to invest in Russia, because for example, Putin is currently seizing the assets of foreign companies, like his own.

...and if this continues, sooner or later Russia will suffer the same fate as North Korea

Putin seems to recognize nothing more than brute force. But in business, such tactics are always doomed to failure. If the business and property of foreign firms are taken away in Russia, they will go to international courts and all over the world there will be confiscation of property belonging to the Russian Federation in order to compensate for the losses caused. Russia will be completely cut off from the whole world. Considering that this is not a high-tech country, its economy will be thrown back many decades. All this is stupid on the part of Putin, like all his recent actions regarding Ukraine. A terminally ill old man with enormous power just went crazy, but ordinary citizens of Russia will pay for this for a long time to come.

At the moment it is simply an empty threat, one which they tried to pedal back from quietly after the headlines were written. This sort of nationalization would make Russia even more uninvestable in future (when they're already off the charts) because it means the government will seize any potential assets, which obviously makes it impossible for foreign buyers to trust that they'll have anything left. It's almost as if Putin has thrown the last 20 years of relative stability out the window in the space of a couple weeks by all these constant mistakes and just shows how totally clueless the government is, instinctively lashing out in whatever small ways they can against the massive sanctions setup due to their unnecessary invasion.

russians themselves are suffering with this move, because those who are also working on these businesses are russians. so after this, a lot of its constituents don't have jobs and are struggling to survive. and you may be right that the owners of these franchises are also russians. because if you happen to visit this country, they don't patronise much the english language, they stick to their local language. and i don't think many westerners are willing to study a new language to live and work in this country.
but what i am thinking is that if in case Putin will fail on Ukraine, he may possibly be ousted...

Do you work in the oil industry? Do you design mining rigs, pumps, drills? Do you work on an oil field?
Or...you watch Russia today?
The same specialist that we're telling us Russia has the second most powerful army in the world that would be in one week parading in Paris?

No, the situation is not different at all, and you could look at the damn history books and see what shit the USSR ended up producing that wasn't good even for African countries anymore and the same time, for everything that comes to exploring oil deposits, once the Russian available technology peaked in the 70's they started trying to copy everything western to no avail, production peaked and only abundant new fields resources kept it somehow going. That's not the case anymore. Either way, I find it hilarious when politicians who have never worked once in a company that doesn't get magic money from the government suddenly have plans to run a profitable consumer-orientated one or how the guy flipping burgers at McDonald's suddenly is an expert in logistic just because he worked there for a few months.



Rename it McNothing! That name would come in handy and accurate for promos 2-3 months later.  

Many regimes make the errors venezuela did after nationalizing the private sector operations of kelloggs, toyota and other businesses. Leaders there confiscated all assets and sold them off to fatten their own pockets. It resulted in a negative trend where jobs were lost and never returned. The economy was weakened by significantly reduced local production of goods, which converged with currency devaluation to drive costs upwards as the bolivar hyperinflated.

Putin will not follow the precedent of venezuela. His goal will be to reopen businesses seized to keep job markets and local economic production intact. Whether he can achieve this feat, will come down to whether he can negotiate with or replace suppliers. He can seize and re-open McDonald's with generic ingredients and dishes that are not from official sources. This is easier to do today than ever. DNA identification in the food industry allows identification of secret ingredients and (perhaps) secret recipes. Every food item prepared by restaurants like McDonald's could be identified by DNA testing and perhaps reverse engineered.

There definitely is a blueprint for Putin's approach potentially being successful. Whether or not he can succeed at this venture, which has not been tried before is anyone's guess.

I think that it's not the best example.
MacDonald's works as a franchise business. So the owners of the actual restaurants (hence the assets) are (probably) Russians.
They were paying for the rights and recipes and parts and MacDonald's was actually having all the contracts right so the suppliers keep sending what's needed where's needed.


However, there's nothing for Putin to seize in MacDonald's. Maybe from other businesses. But going on this track he ensures Russia will become a big no for... basically every goods and services that matter (but I'm no longer surprised; I'm curious how long will it take until most Russians get to understand what happens there).

Closing each other, accusing each other, forcing each other between foreign companies, elbowing each other between Russia, the EU, and even the US. That is the fact that we are now witnessing. No one wants to give in, no one wants to submit. All for the sake of showing who is in charge of the world's economic industry. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea collaborated to shut down the oil business, which made prices in the US soar by more than 50%. Foreign companies operating in Russia began to close and resign. So and will continue to do so during the process of the selfishness of each one who does not want to budge. Who is to blame? who wants to be blamed? all want to win. Is not it?

Watching the news all day is filled with very saturated news.

I think it's counterproductive depending on what company's assets they seize. Let's take McDonalds for example. Say the company decide to leave and then Putin seizes the assets, what is he gonna do with it? Would he be able to just make the stores run like nothing happened, is gonna retain the employees, etc? I think even if he decides to just shut them down and liquidate, who he gonna sell those too? Even if he sell those to his cronies, the money would still be coming from within Russia, no new money comes in.

Makes you wonder how much of the companies leaving has nothing to do with wanting to but they are being forced to.
It's tough to sell burgers in McDonalds if you can get meat in from the outside world.
I can sell donuts & coffee at Dunkin Donuts if the beans & dough can't make past the border.
And if they do, there is no way to get my money back out.

So a business might want to stay open, but there is no way for them to.

As for large amounts of their 'home grown' products being sourced from all over the world, as others have said that is just about everything everywhere.

Which was way so many people were laughing at the Trump people cheering when they were "going to bring manufacturing back to the USA" No, you are going to try to bring assembling things to the USA.

-Dave

The guy is under extreme pressure, he knows he is done and therefore he is trying to make sure that the country is able to secure funds and according to the sources he have already asked China for supplying military aid or necessary financial aid which does mean that he is loosing the war and he knows that, therefore the latest threats are going to the companies who have their institutions set up in Russia already, even if the government seizes them still the companies won't be able to function because of the visa, Mastercard, international payments not being made which means they don't even have any basis to stay in Russia, if they are not leaving to protect ukraine they might as well be leaving because of the sanctions. He needs to know that without sanctions being lifted and him stopping this madness nothing he say is going to work, no threats, no nothing.

This is just so low for a president. To utter such words and to even make it into actions is just pure absurd. This just shows how incompetent he is in terms of leading and when it comes to the economy such as business matters. If he will continue to act like this, most probably the western countries will be turn off with his attitude. Exhibiting such behavior is just manipulative. The moment the western investors come into their senses, probably they will just pull out instead of staying.

This will do no good to Russia's economy. Instead of betterment, they will have nothing in their side once investors lose interest on them. I just hope it won't really go that far because Russian citizens are also affected by their president's acts of incompetency and aggresiveness.

If we know that a man is ready to invade a sovereign country militarily, to destroy everything in his path without any mercy - then why would it be strange to want to nationalize the property that will remain behind the companies that cease to operate in that country? All these companies must take into account the risk of such events, in every business you can profit and you can lose.

All of these companies may one day return if the government in that country changes, and that new government will then do the right thing and return the property to its owners. While everyone is focusing on how many companies are leaving Russia or temporarily shutting down, the drug manufacturing sector is not covered by sanctions and continues to operate normally, despite some wondering how moral it is - but the fact that oil and gas are still flowing from Russia to the countries that impose the biggest sanctions is no less moral.

Of course, Russia will lose a lot of jobs with the closure of all these companies, but this is their internal problem that they have created for themselves - maybe these people will now be redirected to other sectors.

That is straight up threat to the White Collar jobs and they not gonna like it. In fact I assume that they might have started the migration process from the Russia as we speak. They will do so because the future is not good in the Russia and the acts of them have put Russia on hundreds of sanctions. Its not about the business anymore when you are in the Russia, but its all about the sparing the life of themselves and praying to get into jail if they dont listen.

Its too bad, he openly challenged them. He is nuts, he is a "educated illiterate" I would say. The same companies are actually thriving the homes of his own peeps, the families are getting paid by working under those companies.

Until the air clears, they gonna keep it low, but once its done these businesses not gonna step into Russian Land.

On the oil extraction business, it is certain that the extraction, processing and even transportation has become a very specialised business. Even large companies depend on a selected group of technologists and know-how companies. This is nothing like we nationalise and next day we just open as usual. And on the financial side, it is pretty much the same, it is not only the huge investments required, it is the ability to manage efficiently those fluxes of money without loosing them to corruption, inexperience and inflated supply-chains.

If the military invasion of Ukraine by Putin's army is an example of how things are managed in his government, I can already tell you there is plenty of GDP to be lost.

As I know, what concerns the oil and resource research is quite good. At least I've heard they got decent specialists. Also, I agree with your general statement that in globalized world you can't do shit alone (works for any country) but situation with Russia is a bit different. This time there is an external reason for that and since Russia becomes more isolated there is no fear of loosing foreign investors because they already lost them due to other reasons. This rule only applies during the times of free trade.


Venezuela's problems obviously related to their national policy but the kay problem is that the country is run by a drug cartel and they had a specific overall type of management combined with socialistic ideas. Nationalization was one of the most remarkable events but it was not as harmful as their own management.


Also, this topic is kinda overvalued. Many companies did not quit Russia but just froze their operations (just like McDonald's did). It would come to nationalization only in emergency case before getting Russia fully locked, which probably wouldn't happen.

Absolutely none!

The only thing that Russians forget is that even when it comes to oil they can't do shit without western equipment. The first Russian artic platform was 20 years decommissioned Conoco oil platform,  most of the drilling in northern Siberia was actually done by western companies, see the associations with BP and Shell, and what is not western is made in South Korea.

Let's look at the pride of Russia, the Kamaz with 8 times winner in a row truck:

Let's look at something else, the pride of the new Russian air fleet, the Sukhoi Superjet 100:

Yeah, you know what all these have in common with fries?
The ovens at McDonald's are produced in the US, the girls the same, and no, you can't cook hamburgers on Lada radiators, which btw are made by Renault.
 

In a current situation these actions look quite reasonable. Nothing unexpectable.
1. This was done in response for overall cancelling culture around Russia when companies are under pressure in order to leave the Russian market. And since everything was done rapidly, it is reasonable to set some limitations for capital movement.
2. Lots of russian companies have frozen assets in EU. This time even a large part if Russia's central bank reserves were arrested by EU.

In that situation the response from Russia is quite reasonable. Probably, many other presidents would do the same in such sutuation.



So you think there is no difference between oil and burgers?

Reading this reminded me of that video of Chavez casually pointing at a business and saying "Expropriate it" with the owner collapsing in tears as he get pulled away. What is Putin gonna do with all that empty McDonalds he took over? LOL.  This is so totally not gonna bite Russia back /s.


This is going to be East Berlin all over again with walls and guards with their guns pointed IN rather than out.

The moron thinks this is 1819 and nationalizing a shoe factory will simply work from day one like never happened, he could at least have watched what happened in Venezuela when they did the same shit.

Ok, nationalize AvtoVAZ and take over from Renault, you have a car factory! Glory to the might moron!
But in reality, you have a factory without half of the gear for those cars that even now come from Romania and Morocco, good luck trying to persuade the company to sell your those after you have taken over their business. Poeple really think that this substitution works wonders, it doesn't!

One should always look at what happened to Huawei when they were cut from the chips market, they can't launch a 5g phone, even their flagship is 4G, and this is in China where some poeple really believe everything is produced. No, it's made by foreign companies, take over and you won't have anything working anymore.

But what can you tell to the average Russian who thinks that the Sun revolves around Russia, that they are the mightiest, the most technologically advanced, bla bla, they will say of course it works, glory to the USSR and then 4 years later when they are down the drain dirt poor only making vodka from old rags and hay they,  will blame the evil capitalists for their own stupidity.

If they do that then they can say goodbye to any Western company from reopening there again for ages,may be never again.Western corporate businesses sure know business much better than any Russian company and once they see the way they are treated now it is only normal they will not ever again go and open a branch in Russia.

I have said in other threads that what Putin is doing is just making Russia a new North Korea from the level of isolation they will get from such moves.The Russian government doesn't seem to care now but they will soon as the effects of the sanctions are projected to be felt in the long term and who will suffer the most are the Russian civilians.They,the civilians are the only ones who can stop this war but it seems they are in a deep sleep now.

Even if they seize the assets of this foreign individuals, how will they be able to run it as smoothly themselves? I am pretty sure that they're not going to be able to do the same operations as the previous owners and I think that those people who own those businesses have safety net in place when this war started.

Is this a live threat or what... If business operations are not open then sending their representative to jail is the solution? I strongly believe Putin is upto something in this regards, but if should in case its just an ordinary threat to lives and properties then i think the citizens will suffer a great havoc of poverty and hunger for years before they can begin to recover.

Now that the Russians bitcoin investors are going out of the country to seek for better settlement elsewhere is an indication of something terrible and stinky is about to unveil in Russia and those that quickly sensed it has taken a drastic step for an alternative but the poor will suffer this, only few ones will be able to make it out to another country and as the rate of emigration is high he may place embargo on leaving the country. I pray this man does not initiate the third world war.

Putin's latest crazy idea is to coerce Western and multinational firms into keeping their business open in his dominions. The message here is "you have to keep your doors open or I will take all your assets and property and also send your executives to jail".

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/11/russia-mcdonalds-business-seizures/



This is a very peculiar understanding of business and the rule of law. I wonder that, if this is effectively implemented, will we ever see a western company investing or doing business in Putin's dominions? Will the jobs for the Russian people created by this companies disappear for decades to come?