REUTERS

Dan Loeb swats away activist with heavy hand

December 2, 202112:35 PM GMT

LONDON, Dec 2 (Reuters Breakingviews) – Dan Loeb, the billionaire activist calling for change at Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), has fended off his own mini-revolt.

Shareholders in Third Point Investors (TPOGu.L), a UK-listed trust that owns a stake in Loeb’s main fund, roundly rejected a move by uppity shareholder Asset Value Investors to throw a Third Point employee, Josh Targoff, off the board.

Loeb’s victory is clear. Votes against the proposal numbered 30 million, versus just 9 million for it. read more

Allegations and Litigation Relating to Spymasters in Shell’s Corporate Security Department

By John Donovan

See below a self-explanatory email I sent yesterday to named senior executives at Shell.

It mentions the current momentous events at Royal Dutch Shell, although that is not the subject of the email. In that connection, I have not spotted any reference in current news coverage to the Dutch police raid at Shell’s current HQ in The Hague.

That astonishing development may have fuelled a growing feeling that the Dutch government has turned anti-Shell by allowing Nigerian and climate change litigation against Shell to proceed in the Dutch courts and tightening up Dutch tax regulations affecting Shell. read more

FORTUNE

Shell’s decision to leave the Netherlands is about keeping investors on its side in difficult times

BY KATHERINE DUNN: November 16, 2021 4:58 PM GMT

The Dutch government is scrambling to find a way to make Royal Dutch Shell remain royal and Dutch after the oil and gas giant announced Monday that it had decided to up sticks from its home in the Hague and move its headquarters to London.

The Dutch government’s eagerness to retain the giant firm is not surprising—and exactly how Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his cabinet are trying to do so says a lot about which of Shell’s stated reasons for moving is the most important one. read more

FINANCIAL TIMES

Dutch government rushes to keep Shell in Netherlands

Mehreen Khan in Brussels and Tom Wilson in London

The Dutch government has launched an eleventh-hour attempt to keep Shell in the Netherlands by seeking to abolish a controversial dividend tax cited by the energy group as a reason to unify its share structure and move its headquarters to the UK. Officials from the Dutch government told the Financial Times that the caretaker government of Mark Rutte was seeking to find a last-minute parliamentary majority to scrap a 15 per cent withholding tax that has long been a source of complaint for Shell and fellow Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever. The political machinations come hours after Shell announced it would end its dual-share structure… read more

Minister hails ‘vote of confidence’ for Brexit Britain as Shell moves its HQ to London from the Netherlands and plans to scrap ‘Royal Dutch’ from its name

• Kwasi Kwarteng said decision – subject to a vote – would ‘create jobs’ in Britain
• Board meetings and senior executives will move to London in boost for capital 
• Decision follows lawsuit by climate activists to force Shell to slash emissions 

By RORY TINGLE, HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 11:30, 15 November 2021 | UPDATED: 12:26, 15 November 2021

Oil giant Shell today announced it will move its headquarters and tax residence to the UK and drop ‘Royal Dutch’ from its name for the first time in 130 years.

The decision was hailed as a ‘clear vote of confidence in the British economy that will ‘create jobs’ by business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng. The firm pays hundreds of millions of pounds worth of taxes every year, which will now go to the Treasury. read more

The Washington Post

Shell wants to move headquarters amid cleaner energy shift

By Associated Press: Today at 6:58 a.m. EST LONDON — Royal Dutch Shell proposed moving its headquarters from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and streamlining its structure Monday in hopes of making it easier to move forward in a world transitioning away from a dependence on fossil fuels.

The company, which has been incorporated in the U.K. with Dutch tax residency and dual class shares since 2005, said it wanted to move to a more conventional structure to be able to make the company more competitive as it seeks to meet the challenges of shifting toward cleaner energy.

Dutch officials said they were “unpleasantly surprised” by the move.

“The government deeply regrets that Shell wants to move its head office to the United Kingdom,” Dutch Economic Affairs and Climate Minister Stef Blok said. “We are in talks with the top of Shell about the implications of this move for jobs, critical investment decisions and sustainability.” read more

The New York Times

Shell Proposes Shift to Britain, Dropping ‘Royal Dutch’ From Name

The restructuring is meant to make the company more appealing to investors and make it easier to sell assets, the oil giant said.

By Stanley Reed: Nov. 15, 2021, 6:02 a.m. ET

Shell, Europe’s largest energy company, said Monday that it was proposing to move its headquarters to Britain from the Netherlands and make major changes in its share ownership and tax status.

The moves are designed to make the company, whose share price has lagged rivals, more appealing to investors, and they come less than a month after an activist investor, Daniel Loeb, suggested changes to the company’s structure. They are likely to be seen as a blow to the Netherlands, where Shell has an enormous presence, and a windfall for the British government as it struggles to demonstrate that Brexit can provide an economic boost. read more

REUTERS

Shell’s Dutch exit comes with legal side benefits

15 Nov 2021: By George Hay

Shifting its tax residency to the UK, along with its head office and CEO, simplifies the $170 bln oil major’s structure. It also makes it easier to reorganise for the energy transition. The implied snub to the Dutch court which ordered Shell to cut emissions is an added bonus.

Royal Dutch Shell said on Nov. 15 it would seek shareholder approval to change its corporate structure in order to unify its two classes of shares. The company will also shift its tax residence to the United Kingdom.Shell is currently incorporated in the UK but has Dutch tax residence and a dual-class share structure. It adopted that approach in 2005 after combining Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij and The Shell Transport and Trading Company under a single parent company.

Shell said a unified share structure would allow it to compete more effectively by allowing for an acceleration of share buybacks, as there will be a larger single pool of ordinary shares that can be bought back. read more

MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2021 8:37 AM

Shell to ditch ‘Royal Dutch’ name and dual-share structure amid activist pressure

NICHOLAS EARL

Nicholas Earl is a sports and business contributor.

Royal Dutch Shell will dump its dual-share structure, change its name, and move its tax residence from the Netherlands to the UK.

The oil group argues the moves will boost its competitiveness.

It will now offer a single line of shares, which it considers simpler for investors to understand and value.

Alongside moving its tax residence, Shell will establish its CEO, CFO and board meetings in the country. read more

The Telegraph

Shell to move headquarters from Netherlands to UK

Firm says unified structure will help to ‘accelerate switch to net zero’

By Matt Oliver 15 November 2021 • 7:57am

Royal Dutch Shell has unveiled plans to move its headquarters from the Netherlands to the UK.

The Anglo-Dutch energy giant said the move to abandon its current dual structure would make it nimbler as it moves away from oil and gas and towards greener sources of power.

The move comes as Shell is facing pressure from Third Point, an activist investor run by Wall Street billionaire Dan Loeb. read more

Shell Is the Greenest Big Oil Company. Look What That Got It.

Shekhar Patil: 31 Oct 2021

Royal Dutch Shell PLC shows much that is wrong with environmental, social and governance investing. The Anglo-Dutch company was the first to target reduced carbon emissions from customers, has gone further than any of the other oil supermajors to shift its direction away from fossil fuels and is closest of any of them to meeting the Paris carbon target. It even has a better ESG score than electric-car leader Tesla or hydrogen wonder stock Plug Power. read more

The Telegraph

Pressure to go green will trigger more corporate splits

There is a logic to breaking up traditional business into green and legacy units

MATTHEW LYNN 31 October 2021 • 12:00pm

The demand by the activist hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb that the oil giant Shell split itself into its fossil fuel and green energy units this week certainly came with plenty of grandiose promises. Loeb, and his Third Point fund, want to save the planet, and make themselves a bundle of money at the same time. Smart. read more

By John Donovan

Last Sunday I was described in the Channel 4 TV documentary Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant as Shell’s No1 Enemy and as Shell’s nightmare. (Transcript of the relevant segment)

Within days I seem to have lost both titles to a billionaire upstart, Daniel Loeb, who seems intent on breaking up Shell.

From my unique perspective on Shell senior management over recent decades, he is right to question competence and direction.

How has Shell ended up with a foe (me) operating a website using the top-level domain name royaldutchshellplc.com and as a consequence dealing on Shell’s behalf with job applications and all manner of other email correspondence meant for Shell? This is the humiliating situation Shell has been in since 2005. Evidently, no one at Shell has had the gumption to do anything to put an end to such a farce. read more

FROM A MAJOR ARTICLE ON TWO-THIRDS OF PAGE 8 OF THE SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS SECTION OCT 31, 2021

How should Shell, Glencore and British American Tobacco deal with their “toxic” legacy businesses?

Robert Watts: Sunday October 31 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

Ben Van Beurden knew last weekend that he was facing one of the more trying weeks of his 38 years at Shell. But he still had no clue of the impending ambush being prepared by an American billionaire activist investor.

Shell’s chief executive knew the quarterly figures for the oil and gas giant he would unveil on Thursday would be bad. Profits between July and September came in at $4.1 billion (£3 billion) — well below the $5.4 billion expected and 25 per cent down on the previous quarter. read more

The Washington Post

Big Oil’s Friday Feeling Will Pass

By Liam Denning | Bloomberg: 30 Oct 2021

Extracts

The inverse of the world’s anxiety about winter energy shortages is higher prices, portending a good fourth quarter to follow. As an added bonus, it provides a schadenfreude-inflected counterargument on days like Thursday. Exxon CEO Darren Woods mentioned it in his opening remarks to the House Oversight Committee to emphasize the difficulty of moving away from fossil fuels.

As an added added bonus, one of those oil majors moving a bit more quickly than most, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, has attracted the attention of an activist, Third Point LLC’s Dan Loeb, calling for it to split its green operations (plus gas) from its old oil business. read more

Forbes

One Foot On The Dock: Why Breaking Up Shell May Be Just The Beginning

Rob Day: Contributor Hedge Funds & Private Equity I invest in and write about private equity and sustainability.

Activist investor Dan Loeb made headlines this week with his move (through his Third Point LLP) to take a stake in Royal Dutch Shell and then argue that it should be broken up into two entities.

His proposal is to spin out what he calls the “legacy business” and an “energy transition business” (the latter to include LNG, renewables, and energy marketing). His argument is that the company is currently satisfying few stakeholders (shareholders, ESG advocates, etc) by trying to do everything under one roof. read more