Russia is “uninvestable for the foreseeable future”, said Stephen Bird, chief executive of Abrdn, a statement of the obvious for a fund management group. If BP and Shell can ditch long-held investments and partnerships, Abrdn can certainly wave goodbye to the 0.5% of its assets that it currently holds in Russia. The money is the customers’ anyway.
The moral clarity around the moves by BP and Shell owed much, of course, to the fact that the duo were in bed in state-backed energy companies that are arms of the Kremlin – Rosneft and Gazprom, respectively.
