Shell mulls a breakup
The oil major is looking for a less taxing energy transition
PITY BEN VAN BEURDEN. The boss of Royal Dutch Shell is an affable man steering a Scylla-and-Charybdis course between oil-loving shareholders on one extreme and carbon-hating ones on the other. His latest task is to convince investors that Shell’s strategy of doubling down on oil and gas production while bulking up on renewables is viable, even as Third Point, a hedge fund, demands it breaks itself up. And for seven years he has run a company with one foot in the Netherlands and the other in Britain—with Brexit in between.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “A simple solution”
Business November 20th 2021
- China’s communist authorities are tightening their grip on the private sector
- Shell mulls a breakup
- The business phrasebook
- An auction at Sotheby’s raises $676m
- The video-game industry has metaverse ambitions, too
- Times are good for American railways
- Walmart gets its bite back
- Wanted: a new senior business writer
From the November 20th 2021 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Business
Germans are world champions of calling in sick
It’s easy and it pays well
Knowing what your colleagues earn
The pros and cons of greater pay transparency
A $500bn investment plan says a lot about Trump’s AI priorities
It’s build, baby, build
Donald Trump’s America will not become a tech oligarchy
Reasons not to panic about the tech-industrial complex
OpenAI’s latest model will change the economics of software
The more reasoning it does, the more computer power it uses
Donald Trump once tried to ban TikTok. Now can he save it?
To keep the app alive in America, he must persuade China to sell up