Shell also moves to London

More than a year after Unilever, the shareholders of Royal Dutch Shell have also chosen to move their headquarters to the United Kingdom. Whereas the company has been British since 2005, the board will now no longer meet in The Hague. According to the company itself, it has opted for strength by getting rid of the dual share structure with A shares in Amsterdam and B shares in London. From now on there will only be B shares, also in Amsterdam.

Although this makes little difference in terms of personnel numbers, critics fear a loss of international prestige for the Netherlands. Others see this as a vindication of the Brexiteers in England and the attraction of the absence of dividend tax in London. Whether all this is true remains to be seen. What is certain is that the company will have to relinquish its designation as ‘Royal’, which it obtained when it was founded and floated on the stock exchange in 1890. From now on, the stock exchange fund will be known as just Shell. Today, after more than 130 years, a gong ceremony at Beursplein 5 commemorated the ‘historic’ conversion of NV shares into Plc shares.