Jessica Uhl and Ben van Beurden talk before the annual general meeting of Shell
(Picture: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw)The former chief financial officer of Shell is set to walk away with a “golden handshake” worth more than £1 million.
Jessica Uhl’s renumeration package will include a £921,000 payment for “loss of office” plus salary paid until June this year and an as yet to be decided annual bonus. In addition, she will continue to receive pension payments and medical benefits until June despite officially stepping down yesterday.
She announced her departure from Shell early last month citing “family reasons”. She took the decision to leave after her position was moved from The Netherlands to London.
Shell said at the time: “Jessica was a key architect of strategic changes, including the simplification of the company’s share structure and the relocation of the corporate HQ, along with the roles of chief executive officer and chief financial officer, from The Netherlands to the UK.”
Uhl is being replaced by Sinead Gorman, a former civil engineer who joined Shell in 1999. Gorman steps up from her role as head of finance at Shell’s global upstream business. She will be based in London full-time.
The generous payout for Uhl, who became CFO in 2017, comes after a record beating year for Shell. The company made profits of $12.8 billion (£9.5 billion) in 2021 and handed £6 billion to shareholders.
Profits have been driven by soaring oil and gas prices. It has led to fresh calls for a windfall tax on the energy giants, with many consumers struggling with record high petrol prices and soaring household energy bills.
At the end of February, Shell bowed to pressure to exit all joint ventures with Kremlin-controlled oil firm Gazprom, in reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ditching stakes in three major gas projects and the undersea pipeline Nord Stream 2 worth a total of $3 billion (£2.3 billion).
