Business

Shell announced a big change to its corporate structure, with plans to move its tax residency from the Netherlands to Britain, dump its dual-share structure and remove the legacy “Royal Dutch” from its legal name. The oil giant is under pressure to increase returns to investors. Relocating its tax base to Britain gives it more freedom on share buy-backs. Shell is keeping several big divisions, such as global upstream, in the Netherlands. Nevertheless the Dutch government said it was “unpleasantly surprised” by the news.