Rakteem Katakey: Bloomberg.com: February 11, 2016
BG Group Plc, pioneer of natural-gas shipping, will trade on stock exchanges for the last time on Friday, 19 years after it was created.
The shares will delist Monday as BG becomes a fully owned unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc following the industry’s biggest acquisition in more than a decade. The stock has increased ninefold since 1997, when former state monopoly British Gas Plc split its exploration and production arm from retail. Shell gained just 15 percent in the period, while BP Plc declined 4.4 percent.
The BG takeover will catapult Shell into second place among the world’s most valuable public oil companies, behind Exxon Mobil Corp. Shell plans to run BG as a subsidiary initially, merging the two companies over the course of a year, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the matter. BG’s assets, including gas projects from Australia to Kazakhstan, will help the Anglo-Dutch energy giant ride out the oil-price slump.
