FTSE 100’s biggest company could leave London for the US

Shell could leave London. What was rumour is now the subject of public debate. The company’s former CEO told a conference yesterday Shell’s London listing, where it’s the biggest name on the FTSE 100, is “a major issue” because a generally unfavourable European attitude to fossil fuels is having a depressive effect on its share price. This is plausible. By a very rough comparison of market valuations and proven reserves, Shell’s market cap of £180 billion is about $100 billion less than it might be in New York (where its closest rival, Chevron, has similar reserves and a market cap of $298 billion). Furthermore, the current CEO, Wael Sarwan, was promoted last year with a brief to boost Shell’s market value, and he’s since told Bloomberg its location in London “seems to be undervalued”. Its departure would hole the London Stock Exchange below the waterline at a time when it’s already keeling over. The Evening Standard reported last month that new companies raised 35 times more floating on the LSE in 2021 than they did in 2022, and that headlong slump appears to have continued into 2024, when sums raised so far total in the low tens of millions. Would the last one to leave please turn the lights out?