Shell CEO Does Not Rule Out Moving Headquarters to Britain

Canada Restricts Dealings With Hong Kong Over New Security Law

OTTAWA—Foreign Affairs Minister Francois−Philippe Champagne says Canada is suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong as part of a package of responses to the new security law China has imposed on the territory. In a statement, Champagne says Canada will also treat sensitive goods being exported to Hong Kong as if they were being sent to mainland China. That means outright banning some military−related goods from being traded there. China imposed strict new controls on Hong Kong this week, in what Champagne calls a violation of the “one country, two systems” philosophy that was supposed to last 50 years after Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. Champagne’s statement says Hong Kong’s place in the global economy was based on that promise and needs to be reassessed. Canada’s moves…

AMSTERDAM—Royal Dutch Shell is not ruling out moving its headquarters from the Netherlands to Britain, the oil company’s chief executive Ben van Beurden said in a Dutch newspaper interview published on Saturday.

Anglo-Dutch consumer products giant Unilever said last month it plans to ditch its dual Anglo-Dutch legal structure and create a single entity in Britain.

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

“You always need to keep thinking,” Shell’s van Beurden told the newspaper. “Nothing is permanent and of course we will look at the business climate. But moving your headquarters is not a trivial measure. You cannot think too lightly about that.”

A Shell spokesman confirmed the CEO’s comments to Reuters and said the company was looking at ways to simplify its dual structure, as it had been doing for many years.

Shell has a complex Anglo-Dutch holding structure with a tax residency and headquarters in the Netherlands and a registered office in Britain.

Unilever’s decision to move followed the scrapping in 2018 of a plan by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to do away with a 15 percent dividend withholding tax.

Shell’s corporate structure features the parent company headquarters in The Hague but two share classes and other arrangements to prevent the Dutch government from levying withholding tax on dividends paid to shareholders of its former British arm.

The arrangement has come under renewed scrutiny after the Dutch government tried to scrap the dividend tax as an incentive to convince Unilever to unify its dual structure in Rotterdam.

Rutte abandoned the plan after a popular outcry over the tax cut, which was seen as a gift to rich foreigners.

Shell has consistently lobbied against the dividend tax, which it says makes financing dividends, share buy-backs and acquisitions more difficult.

By Anthony Deutsch

Focus News: Shell CEO Does Not Rule Out Moving Headquarters to Britain

Nasdaq-Listed Chinese Company Cheated Creditors by Using Fake Gold as Loan Collateral

Nasdaq-listed Chinese jeweler Kingold Jewelry Inc. (KGJI) has received 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) loans by claiming to use tons of gold as collateral in the past five years. However, the creditors discovered that some of the gold bars are gilded copper alloy. The loans were protected by insurance issued by Chinese state-run PICC Property and Casualty Company (PICC) and some smaller insurers. But the insurers refuse to pay for the loss of Kingold’s creditors by claiming that the insurance contracts defined that they won’t take care of the loss that was created by the policyholder. However, the creditors emphasized that the insurance agreement ruled that insurers will take responsibility if the gold that is supplied by the policyholder doesn’t meet the standard. Kingold designs and manufactures jewelry. It was…