Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided that the Russian subsidiaries of the Carlsberg beer company are to pass ‘under temporary management’ of the Russian state. According to a new rule introduced at the beginning of the year in Russia, the government can decide to seize the assets of companies in ‘hostile countries’. Carlsberg had been in talks to sell its Russian operations for months and said it had not received any official information from the Russian authorities: last month the Danish company had signed an agreement to sell its Russian branch ‘Baltika Breweries’, but had not yet completed the deal. Now the company has been placed under the control of the Russian agency ‘Rosimushchestvo’, as was the case with the Finnish energy company ‘Fortum’ in April.
