EurOil: Shell shareholders back move to London

Shareholders at Shell have overwhelmingly backed plans to relocate the company’s headquarters and tax residence from the Netherlands to the UK, as well as make changes to the Anglo-Dutch major’s shareholder structure.
The move to London will involve the relocation of CEO Ben van Beurden and CFO Jessica Uhl, and Shell’s board and executive committee meetings will also take place in the UK from now on. The plan will also reform the company’s complicated structure of dual-class shares – the result of a merger that took place in 2005 between the UK and Dutch sides of the business – which Shell argues is both confusing for shareholders and limiting for the company.
By having a single line of shares, Shell will be able to buy back more shares from its investors, helping to push up its share price and reward shareholders. Meanwhile, the change in its tax residency will also mean that Shell avoids a 15% dividend tax. There is currently a push inside the Netherlands to remove this tax, but a past attempt by the government in 2017 was ultimately abandoned.
Lastly, Shell will remove the “Royal Dutch” from its registered company name, which it has held for more than a century.
Shell said some 99.7% of voting shareholders had supported the proposals.
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