By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 11:21pm GMT 29/12/2007
Royal Dutch Shell is to shed thousands of jobs as Europe’s largest oil company joins rival BP in trying to cut costs and simplify its structure. Shell is looking to agree one of the largest ever outsourcing deals in the next couple of months, and plans to reorganise other departments, including finance operations.
The company has said previously that it wants to cut costs, but the scale of some of the proposed changes has surprised insiders and led to the leaking of information to an anti-Shell website by disillusioned staff. The biggest change will be in the information technology division, where around 3,600 staff may be affected by a plan to farm out operations to three companies.