Shell CEO does not rule out moving headquarters from Netherlands to Britain

Royal Dutch Shell is not ruling out relocating its headquarters from the Netherlands to Britain, the oil company’s main government Ben van Beurden said in a Dutch newspaper interview posted on Saturday.

Anglo-Dutch buyer products and solutions big Unilever said past month it designs to ditch its dual Anglo-Dutch authorized composition and create a one entity in Britain.

Van Beurden did not explicitly say Shell needs to move its headquarters, Het Financieele Dagblad said.

“You normally want to maintain considering,” Shell’s Van Beurden explained to the newspaper. “Very little is lasting and of course we will glimpse at the small business local climate. But relocating your headquarters is not a trivial measure. You can not feel too frivolously about that.”

A Shell spokesman verified the CEO’s comments to Reuters and said the organization was on the lookout at strategies to simplify its dual composition, as it had been doing for quite a few a long time.

Shell has a elaborate Anglo-Dutch keeping composition with a tax residency and headquarters in the Netherlands and a registered business office in Britain.

Unilever’s decision to move adopted the scrapping in 2018 of a strategy by Dutch Primary Minister Mark Rutte to do absent with a 15% dividend withholding tax.

Shell’s company composition capabilities the parent organization headquarters in The Hague but two share courses and other arrangements to avert the Dutch authorities from levying withholding tax on dividends compensated to shareholders of its previous British arm.

The arrangement has come below renewed scrutiny after the Dutch authorities attempted to scrap the dividend tax as an incentive to convince Unilever to unify its dual composition in Rotterdam.

Rutte abandoned the strategy after a popular outcry over the tax slice, which was witnessed as a gift to loaded foreigners.

Shell has continually lobbied against the dividend tax, which it says can make funding dividends, share obtain-backs and acquisitions more challenging.