Ever since Brexit, the City of London has been worried about its declining role in global finance. Those concerns were most conspicuously realized in the London Stock Exchange’s failure to win last year’s biggest initial public offering — by a British company, no less. But the more substantial risk involves the bourse’s current members.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to Wael Sawan, chief executive officer of Shell Plc, by most measures the biggest London-listed company: He’s ready and willing to look elsewhere to give his undervalued shares their due.
The problem here isn’t Brexit. It’s European investor apathy — if not outright hostility — toward fossil fuels. Once, natural resources giants like Shell saw London, chock full of mining and energy businesses, as their natural home; today, not so much. Instead, the US, now the world’s biggest oil producer, beckons.
And if Shell does leave, it probably…
