Shell CEO Prepares to Step Down Next Year

Sep 2, 2022

(Bloomberg)

Shell Plc has shortlisted candidates to succeed Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden, who is preparing to step down in 2023 after almost a decade at the helm, Reuters reported on Friday, citing two unidentified people from the company.

The 64-year-old has steered the company through some of its most turbulent times. The first big move of his tenure was the 2016 takeover of rival BG Group Plc, a major deal that tested the company’s finances during an oil price slump but is paying huge dividends today as natural gas prices soar.

At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, van Beurden made the first cut to Shell’s dividend since the Second World War, a move that upset investors and underscored the seriousness of the global health crisis for the oil and gas industry. He was also the architect of the company’s plan to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

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The shortlist of candidates to be the next Shell CEO includes Wael Sawan, the company’s head of integrated gas and renewables, as well as Huibert Vigeveno, the head of downstream refining operations, according to the report. It also includes Chief Financial Officer Sinead Gorman and head of upstream Zoe Yujnovich, Reuters reported.

Shell declined to comment. Shares of the company rose 0.9% to 2,293 pence as of 8:14 a.m. in London.The fact that all the potential successors are internal and the heads of major Shell divisions is a vote of confidence in the trajectory that van Beurden has set, according to Biraj Borkhataria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

“What you should expect is a continuation of the plan, rather than a revolution,” Borkhataria said by phone. Sawan is the front-runner because he runs the most important business that generates the most free cash flow, he said.

Van Beurden joined Shell in 1983 and has worked in the Netherlands, Africa, Malaysia, the US and the UK Prior to becoming CEO in January 2014, he spent 10 years working in Shell’s liquefied natural gas business and ran the company’s chemicals business.

Despite being a Dutch national who studied chemical engineering at Delft University of Technology, van Beurden led Shell to a major overhaul of its legal structure that relocated its headquarters from the Netherlands to London and dropped “Royal Dutch” from its name. The move was a reflection of strained relations with its home country, where a major pension fund had dropped all fossil fuel producers from its portfolio and a court had ordered the firm to slash emissions harder and faster than planned.