Not a sarcastic post, so go somewhere else if you are here to joke. I am looking for inspiration. How did Wael differentiate himself from the other candidates to become CEO? Was he on some critical projects that got him noticed?
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Bullet points make it so much more believable. Thanks. Dilbert!
- YL has been really big on buying shares to cancel them rather than paying it out in dividends. Each year they buy up ~7% of the Shell shares and increase the dividend by only 4%; thus, he can mask that the profit and revenue have gone down. It is an incredibly sloppy and expensive way to hide that the overall profitability is falling.
- YL has shown that he is willing to sell assets at a 90% discount and promote the psychopaths that sealed the deals.
- YL has shown that he is willing to cut people too. YL is just cutting with 1000 cuts because he is too weak and lacks the vision to right size the company in one go.
- YL is on track with the greatly reduced production. As per the plan to reduce by 40%. In a few more years, he'll have crippled shell completely
what has he done to ditch the renewables focus? afaik he has doubled down including 1 billion on green hydrogen and even gone so far as to limit our gas and liquid extraction into 2030. can you explain that discrepancy?
also of those three people
fired, two of the roles will still be filled so that’s not a cost savings.
overall you seem nonsensical tbh
Wael is making the hard decisions that others were not willing to. Ditching the ill advised focus on transforming Shell into a renewable energy company and cutting overhead at previously untouchable high executive levels (Zoe, Gretchen, Susannah, etc.) are just a a couple of many examples. Shell will be a much better company as a result.
i can’t think of any flaws in a ranking system like that! you should use it for all things in your decisions in life and let us know where it takes you! always choosing the mostly poorly rated and controversial thing is pure genius!
judging by the amount of whining on this board he must be doing a good job. I like him .....
Did YL differentiate himself, or were all of the options about the same?
I think that he was just picked amongst a pool of candidates. If I flip a coin, would you say that heads or tails differentiated itself...
Nah, it just turned out that way. Stop trying to make a story over flipping a quarter and getting heads a few times in a row. There was no providence, there was nothing that made him better than anyone else, he just got picked. There is no special talent, there is no special knowledge, maybe there is an inside club, but picking him was not an indication that he is special. just look at his tenure, that proves the point that there is nothing special embodied in that choice.
wrong. it is senior leadership turning down budgets for and decisions to buy assets. do you even work here?
shells has two issues. one is that leadership is no longer capable or comfortable making a decision to commit capital when they’re only 60-70% sure on the outcome. unfortunately, this is how you must operate in order to act within the required time windows in this industry. but if you commit capital, wael and his cronies drop the hammer on you and replace with a stooge for spending money. wael all needs all the money to buy back stock. committing capital and being wrong is also the only way to get fired and so the old fogies in senior roles do nothing in order to coast to retirement with no risk.
the other is that shell wants everything to be a done a special shell way - we require this of all vendors and operational sites and it greatly drives up costs. for example, shell must order shell only custom for Shell BOPs which we paid vendors to design and which cost twice as much to buy when everybody else just uses normal ones. in a sense shell thinks it’s better than everyone else because in the 70s and 80s it was. we were told you couldn’t simulate a reservoir with a computer and then we did and we’ve been riding that high and other engineering wins as a part of our culture long after the people responsible retired.
hopefully it is clear to you now why the penny pinching culture pushed by wael strictly so he can make bonus is exacerbating our problems. it’s added another incentive for the old coasters to do nothing and doesn’t address our real problems.
Not sure why wYL is heavily criticized… at the end he is not the one working in exploration and failing to make new discoveries: you are. He is not the one working on useless project or being less efficient than your competitors: you are. He is not the one setting up barriers and politics and meetings over meetings to do your job: you are. We all can turn the ship around , he is just reacting to the obvious observation that we have a lot of coasters, that need to leave and so cut is his way to do it… nothing wrong. Everyone who stays will be in better shape in the future and whoever leaves will also be in better shape in the future by going somewhere meaningful and rewarding for them. Win win situation.
Not sure if YL ticks enough boxes to be classed as a ‘true’ de&i, but who cares, he’s s. t at his job and still earns 50 million a year. Let’s discuss his total incompetence rather than his background which is irrelevant.
@y7
TLDR:
By existing as he is YL is Shell's token for pandering, appeasing minorities cry for white guilt, and virtue signaling. YL is better looking than BVB, and I guess quite a few of the alternate candidates. Shell is not post DEI, it is still ongoing and may get worse.
YL's appointment followed a long period of being a high potential candidate. Of moving him around to give him the perception of experience and credibility. Of grooming heir apparents. Of identifying a pool of candidates working with consultants, screening, and a nominating committee. Then, TAA-DAA! He's CEO. This is the same process dominated by the same gang of id--ts with the same worldview that put BVB in the same role.
BVB pussied-under to the WEF elites and the c_untry club fingerwaggers. And ruined this company. There were a lot of bad sweeping policies under BVB, betting big on the wrong trends. Just look at what happened in Spain last month and WHY it happened, wind and solar are dead. And not just betting on renewables and EV but Shell made bad choices even within those sectors. And the huge government subsidies that are absolutely required to make these profitable. But now go peruse the Big Beautiful Bill to see your future, if there is any rug left, it will be pulled out in two years. Meanwhile Big Oil will outcompete Shell.
So now we bring in an outsider to crawfish.
But understand something. YL rose through the ranks in the prior era of bad decisions, rising even faster during DI. He is a product of that era period and of the people who pushed those agendas. And the whte guilt WKE crowd are mostly still in their roles. Don't fool yourself into thinking DI was not a big part of YL's success. Or that we're in a post D*I Shell. We are not.
But why YL, why now?
BVB was the establishment-looking old wh*te fa-t that could be the face of radical, shift-with-the-winds change at Shell. But now reversing course, we can't have an establishment-looking old white fa-t as the face of Shell! We could lose all of our ESG points! So we need a new young fresh non-Euro face to sell our transition away from Good Corporate Citizen back to the dark side.
YL is not an event. As CEO, he is not an individual. He is the product of a system and a trend. He can only be understood in context and over a longer history. Look at it, understand it. Then you will understand him.
he is transforming Shell, a western company, into an authoritarian and non-transparent middle eastern company as evidenced by quiet and covert layoffs.
The above is spot on! This is exactly his style! Sneaky and manipulative. Shafting the employees is fine.
@hk he is a BS CEO
If you are looking for inspiration in Wael, I am afraid you will be disappointed
Wael is non-transparent with Shell investors and Shell employees about actual employee count, actual rate of return of business. Raised in Canada with Canadian nationality he is transforming Shell, a western company, into an authoritarian and non-transparent middle eastern company as evidenced by quiet and covert layoffs.
Here's what the Shell report says.
Career
Wael began his career at Shell in 1997 as an engineer with Petroleum Development Oman. By the mid-2000s, Wael was Managing Director and Chairman of Shell Qatar, where he oversaw Shell's business in Qatar, including its LNG and GTL divisions. Wael then became Executive Vice President of Deep Water, where he was responsible for driving its transformation into a leading business for Shell. Prior to being appointed CEO at the start of 2023, Wael joined the Executive Committee in 2019 as Upstream Director and in 2021, he became Shell's Director of Integrated Gas, and Renewables and Energy Solutions. Wael was a trustee of Shell Foundation from 2019 to the end of 2022.
I think it really should say " Worked in the right places, with help from his seniors. Then was successfully able to move to a new role before the outcome of his work was known." Was he EVP of deep water when they sold Guyana to Exxonmobil for one dollar?
Obviously, more sales and cuts than growth. But remember Shell is still pledging to cut emissions from its products by 40%, so cutting without replacement is actually the way to achieve that. While I think it is a stupid plan, Wael is actually sticking to it. What a visionary! With just a few more years of cutting he will be able to sufficiently cripple Shell.
Wikipedia: “Sawan received a pay packet of £7.9 million ($10 million) for 2023, having become chief executive at the start of last year on an annual salary of £1.4 million.”
Apart from “savings” (aka cuts), what positive growth, legacy-income producing plays/projects has he brought into the Shell portfolio?
I recall the days when you should be able to id specific initiatives that produce company income in some multiple of your overheaded annual salary. i.e. - A basic measure of earning your keep.
Has he done that during his tenure?
@nz GOT’EM
It’s simple what he does. Cut cut cut the work force to big up his bonus and buy back shares to keep the institutions happy.
Then retire and leave the company to rot. Short term gain.
No vision
No value added.
Pathetic leadership
Asset stripping
The end.
i mean. the guys just a fool trying to figure out how to make YL look smart
YL will never buy an asset and has zero interest in it. if we wanted to buy an asset we wouldn’t have spent 54 billion on buybacks.
all YL is doing is juicing EPS. he is not setting us for the long term. revenue is down. because assets are declining.
and once again- a person is acting like YL started cutting in anticipation of AI in 2022. lol, please man. show me the NVIDIA you bought if you knew about this in 2021.
To be fair, if you state that the liabilities went down by $14 Billion, ( the number on page 242 of the annual report is only $10 Billion... silly mistake right? ... maybe you're counting an estimate of 2025 in that number?) it is more than worth mentioning that the revenue went down from $386 Billion to $289 Billion... Revenue went down by a whopping $97billion!!!!!!!!!! ( That is from 2022 to 2023 page 241 of the annual report)
Profit went from $42.8 Billion to $16.5 Billion.... But you know liability is down; but profit and revenue is down even more. (page 241 of the annual report)
Revenue reduced 25%, liability reduced by 5%... that seems like a loosing battle.
Tsk Tsk, cherry picking numbers like that is analogous to picking the scene with a comedic line from a horror movie. Yes, it is real and bonafide part of the story but it doesn't reflect the nature or the wholistic experience.
What he's been doing the past few years is trying to reduce cost to clean up the balance sheet and increase cash flow. If you look at the long term and other non-current liabilities, it's down almost $14 billion from when he became CEO. The next step will be to start looking at every corporate support function and decide where AI can possibly be used to reduce SG&A cost. Every business across the globe will be doing this in the next few years as AI systems become more reliable and can help replace office work that is repetitive or non-value add. Think about all the outputs corporate staff creates that maybe necessary but no one ever reads again. If you can cut SG&A costs by 30%-50% with negligible reduction in quality in the next 3 years, think about the organization you'll be handing off to the next CEO. I think he is setting up Shell to be able to continue to pay dividends with a healthy increase annually and a balance sheet that is setup to make acquisitions that will increase Shell's cash flow without destroying the liabilities or equity side of the balance sheet. If he can successfully handle the emotional (reducing staff by 30%-50% is difficult for any human) side of leaning out the corporate side of Shell, the stock price will reflect it.
he was cutting well before AI dude. crediting him as cutting because of AI is hilarious
also, where is the market response to him doing a good job? how’s the stock?
Shell really needs to pick a ceo from outside the company next time.
Cut cut cut but stock not going up up up. Bad ceo
Wael has been a great CEO. He's going to have to make hard decisions given the corporate support functions have too many people that don't touch operations at all. If you're not generating ideas that increase revenue or reduce costs in tangible ways, there's no need for you with how fast AI is accelerating. This is not only about Shell but all corporate support functions across the globe. There has to be a plan to only keep corporate staff that will add value above and beyond what AI can do. This will allow you to remain competitive and increase shareholder value.
I think Zoë would have made a better CEO. But let’s be honest, she never had a shot as an outsider (and as a woman, sadly)
Additionally, I ask is there a way that he distinguished himself from other CEO's?
- Quiet, pervasive, continuous layoffs
*Stick to the plan to cut production
*Sell US and Canadian assets at vastly discounted prices
*Ridiculous $$ volumes of share buybacks
*Meaningless, pointless self interviews, and removed the Menti trash talk that was honest
*Stick to DEI
I think he made the cutting and layoffs more covert and changed them to quiet and pervasive layoffs, and reduced the ability to SVS during the quiet layoffs. Shell has a lot more employees per volume produced. I guess that the layoffs are needed, but because of the volume it is really poorly targeted. Some shouldn't have been forced to leave and some that stayed should have been forced out.
It still bothers me that as CEO he never called to change the direction of stating that in 10-years Shell would drastically cut production.
Under his leadership a lot of US and Canadian assets were sold at extremely discounted prices.
Share buybacks have gotten out of control and are considered returning money to the shareholders... that's crazy, a dividend would return it to the shareholders. Buy backs just reward the former shareholders that sold.
Those internal interviews are so useless. At least they did away with the ability to trash talk via Menti. But at least that was honest even if it had no class.
Shell's going with DEI over merit.
DEI
He swallows. He can ingest huge volumes of man goo.
He was part of Andy Brown's A-team back in Qatar. As Andy rose within the ranks, he supported people close to him and put them in key positions.
Wael is good, but I bet there were other candidates that were equally good but were not part of the right inner circle.
Wael has immense capacity. He can ingest a significant volume of information, digest it, and make recommendations on what he heard.
He also has crisp delivery and looks people firmly in the eye when he speaks to them (it can be daunting).
He is well groomed and dresses well.
He does what he says he will do.
As others have said, he is a Harvard graduate and has Ivy League connections.
From those perspectives, he is a complete candidate. He is predictable and dependable to the board. I agree with many others on this sub that his strategy and vision are lacking, and his only real tools are to cut costs and do buybacks. That is a byproduct of the modern era of management. Lots of strategy consulting practices without deep, core technical understanding of what makes the company money. BP’s EVP of strategy is of similar cloth. She is a former McKinsey parter. Having management consulting leaders is a “flavor of the decade” in my opinion. There is nothing inherently wrong with having an MBA, but having the knowledge learned from that degree be the primary source of decision making will not yield long term fruit. The MBA should supplement the technical; it shouldn’t dominate decision making.
The most disappointing aspect isn’t that Wael is ill-equipped to steer the company in the right direction - it’s that his management style is pervasive throughout the organization.
🐳 🦢 cut cut cut cut cut cut cut
YLs claim to fame is delivering an offshore project early and blowing BVB
He did graduate from Harvard Business School. Most of the elites come from the ivy league.