Oct 29, 2021
Leading Shell investor rejects call for energy group to split
Third Point, run by activist investor Daniel Loeb, wrote to its investors on Wednesday saying that dividing Shell into a legacy oil, refining and chemicals company, and a separate gas, renewables and marketing business would probably lead to "An acceleration of CO2 reduction as well as significantly increased returns for shareholders". "Drawing attention to that and getting Shell to better communicate that is a good thing," but splitting the company could destroy the benefits of Shell's integrated business model, he said. Shell is under fire on several fronts after ABP, the Dutch pension fund, announced plans earlier in the week to divest all its holdings in fossil fuel companies, including Shell, because it saw insufficient opportunities to affect the energy transition through those businesses. "I believe we have an incredibly coherent strategy," Ben van Beurden, Shell chief executive, said on Thursday following the company's third-quarter results, when he warned that replacing long-term shareholders with hedge fund investors could derail the energy sector's transition plans. Shell's integrated collection of assets allows it to do things that would be "Very hard to replicate if [we] were just indeed split up into a number of separate companies", he said, adding that Shell's investments in clean energy were largely funded by the legacy oil and gas business.
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