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Royal Dutch Shell appoints Charles Holliday as chairman | Royal Dutch Shell appoints Charles Holliday as chairman |
(about 2 hours later) | |
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has appointed former Bank of America and DuPont chair Charles Holliday as chairman. | Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has appointed former Bank of America and DuPont chair Charles Holliday as chairman. |
Mr Holliday will take up the new post after Shell's 2015 annual general meeting, subject to shareholder approval. | Mr Holliday will take up the new post after Shell's 2015 annual general meeting, subject to shareholder approval. |
He will take over from Jorma Ollila, who will step down from the board. | He will take over from Jorma Ollila, who will step down from the board. |
Separately, Shell said profits in the third quarter rose to $5.27bn (£3.3bn) from $4.25bn a year earlier. | Separately, Shell said profits in the third quarter rose to $5.27bn (£3.3bn) from $4.25bn a year earlier. |
Cheaper oil | |
Mr Holliday stepped down as chairman of Bank of America in September, but remains on the board. | |
He was chief executive of DuPont from 1998 to 2009, and chairman from 1999 to 2009, having joined the company as an engineer in 1970. | |
Mr Ollila, a former chairman and chief executive at Nokia, said he was "delighted" Mr Holliday had been appointed. | |
Shell said its quarterly earnings for oil exploration, refining and trading had improved, after one-off charges were stripped out. | |
Its upstream business, which searches for and extracts oil and gas, saw earnings jump to $4.34bn from $3.46bn from the previous year. | |
The downstream division, which includes the parts of Shell that refine and trade crude oil, recorded earnings of $1.79bn, up from $892m in the same period last year. | |
Oil prices have dropped by more than 20% over the past four months. Prices have been trading at near four-year lows of around $85 a barrel as a result of slowing demand, particularly in China, and ample supplies. | |
Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said the recent drop in oil prices was "part of the volatility" of the industry which "underlines the importance of our drive to get a tighter grip on performance management, keep a tight hold on costs and spending, and improve the balance between growth and returns." |
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