Shell shareholders: No problems with transportation | Economie

This proposal garnered sufficient support during a special Ahoy shareholder meeting and via a video link. The owners of about 58 percent of the shares voted and nearly everyone, about 99.8 percent, voted in favor of the plans.

According to Shell, simplifying the shareholder structure should ensure that the company can operate faster and more flexibly. Last month, plans to become an all-British company were announced on paper.

Shell is indeed a British company, but its head office is located in the Netherlands and is also located here for tax purposes. Now that this is about to change, the company will also lose the right to call itself Royal. So the official name of Royal Dutch Shell will disappear. The company will continue as a shell company.

The chief executive of the oil and gas group, Ben van Beurden, who was unable to attend the shareholder meeting due to illness, previously described the loss of the royal title as “especially painful and unfortunate”. Aside from moving the top of the company to London, which will cost a few dozen jobs, nothing will change, he says. Shell has approximately 8,500 employees in the Netherlands and the company will continue to be active here, for example in the development of sustainable energy.

It is alleged that Shell’s move was prompted by the failure to abolish the profit tax in the Netherlands. Earlier, Unilever also decided on paper to become all-British for this reason. This head office is also in the British capital and is no longer in Rotterdam.

Dozens of protesters from Code Rood and Extinction Rebellion gathered outside Ahoy, where the shareholder meeting was held. They believe that Shell’s choice to become an all-British company indicates that the oil and gas group is only interested in money and not in a “safe environment”. A spokeswoman for the two organizations said rather than focus on profit, Shell should repair the damage it is doing around the world.