Presumably, Simon Henry, chief financial officer at Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB), is no slouch with numbers. Chances are then he would have liked the look of the £1.27m he generated from the sale of 50,000 of his shares in the Anglo-Dutch oil & gas major. The sale earlier this month still leaves Mr Henry with 308,364 shares in the group, worth around £7.86m at current prices. Moreover, shareholders recently received a boost when Shell announced that it had committed itself to spending over $30bn (£17.7bn) buying back its shares and handing out higher dividends over the next two years.
Shell, along with drillers both great and small, will be looking on with interest at the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence. Regardless of the uncertainties arising from that issue for the North Sea tax regime, some fiscal reforms are going to be needed to ensure the long-term viability of UK offshore. For its part, Shell has been particularly bullish on its investment plans for the UK continental shelf, but talk is cheap this side of the vote.