Shell Announces Successful Completion Of BG Merger

The BG Group will now be officially delisted from the London Stock Exchange after Royal Dutch Shell's Scheme of Arrangement with the group has become effective.

The entire issued ordinary share capital of BG Group is now owned by Shell.

Shell announced the successful completion of the merger after delivering the court order to the Registrar of Companies earlier today, following the Court's sanctioning of the Scheme at a February 11, 2016 hearing.

Since Shell originally announced its plans for the deal in April 2015, Chief Executive Officer Ben Van Beurden has been a staunch supporter of the deal, stating that the acquisition of BG Group would be beneficial to shares by way of reducing redundancies, banking on anticipated increases in liquid natural gas sales. Related: Is Venezuela Trying To Hide Oil Assets With This Bizarre Move?

In Monday's press release, van Beurden said, "This is an important moment for Shell. It significantly boosts our reserves and production and will bring a large injection to our cash flow. We have acquired productive oil and gas projects in Brazil and Australia and other key countries. We will now be able to shape a simpler, leaner, more competitive company, focusing on our core expertise in deep water and LNG."

As part of the BG Group takeover, Shell will issue 1,523,804,425 New Shell Shares (218,728,308 Shell A shares and 1,305,076,117 Shell B shares), bringing Shell's total capital to 4,209,649,887 Shell A shares and 3,745,486,731 Shell B shares. Shares of Shell A and Shell B will have equal voting rights. Related: UAE Offers India Free Oil To Ease Storage Woes

The new Shell shares were admitted to the London Stock Exchange by 8:00am GMT February 15, 2016.

The merger will make Shell Britain's largest publically owned company, as well as the world's largest producer of liquid natural gas (LNG)-taking the title away from the world's current largest producer, ExxonMobil Corp.

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

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