Bold deal leaves Shell boss as Ben van Browne and Lund as a footnote

An agreed £47bn takeover by Shell is set to consign BG Group chief executive Helge Lund to the ranks of history's footnote guys, alongside William Henry Harrison, US president for one month in 1841. The Norwegian has served only slightly longer as boss of BG as a fully independent business.

In contrast, the takeover, if it succeeds, could define Ben van Beurden as a chief executive as transformative as Lord Browne was at BP. In one bold move, he is set to make the Anglo-Dutch group the biggest independent oil company by production and the largest liquefied natural gas business. It is for this strategic reason that rival groups will now at least contemplate hostile bids for natural gas specialist BG.

Shell has agreed to buy its smaller rival for £13.50 a share, a 50 per cent premium to the price on Tuesday, when news of the deal was already leaking. That is less generous than might appear. First, because two-thirds of the price is in Shell shares. Second, because BG has been hit by challenges greater than the drop in the oil price, reflected in a 48 per cent peak-to-trough slump in the share price.

The question raised by the departure of charismatic chief executive Sir Frank Chapman in 2012 was whether there was a compelling future for a group created by the spin-off of Centrica in 1997. That question recurred last year with a horrendous profits warning and the departure of Chris Finlayson, Sir Frank's successor. The board has now answered with a "No", despite recruiting Mr Lund as a trouble shooter.

The matter-of-fact Mr van Beurden must justify a deal only mildly accretive to Shell's earnings by 2017. The best way will be to beat a pre-tax synergies target of $2.5bn a year and sell assets earmarked for disposal for more than their combined price tag of $30bn. Absent a competing bid, the Dutchman can at least claim to have stolen a march on rivals such as ExxonMobil. But without a recovery in the oil price, the advantage may prove to be illusory

Mr Lund is meant to help Mr Van Beurden manage a takeover fraught with operational and regulatory complexity. After so short a stint, the ex-Statoil boss can impart knowledge of BG that must, at best, be sketchy. He will however leave his job with remuneration expected to approach £20m by way of compensation for hurt feelings. It is not so much a reward for failure as a superfluity fee. Harrison, less happily, caught pneumonia after an al fresco presidential acceptance speech and expired shortly thereafter.

Jade emperor

Emerging markets always need a new frontier and the City of London fulfils that function for recruiters such as Robert Walters. Oxcarts gave way to automobiles a while back in this millennia-old commercial centre, so the theme is of post-crash re-emergence rather than rampageous industrialisation.

Robert Walters and its eponymous chief executive, who sports a jade bracelet in preference to a tie, sit in a sweet spot. This is thanks to a niche in hiring compliance and back-office staff on salaries of £40,000 to £150,000 a year. City types of yore wore sharp suits and urged clients to fill their boots. Today they bear clipboards and cite Financial Conduct Authority rules with the relish of a theologian quoting a juicy passage of Deuteronomy.

Resurgent recruitment of permanent banking staff helped raise first-quarter gross profits 22 per cent for the UK division and 12 per cent for the group.

Robert Walters retrenched less severely than some rivals in the downturn. Consequent operational gearing has emboldened analysts to lift year-end profit forecasts 7 per cent. If you are confident about the world's economic prospects, the shares are worth owning on a forward earnings ratio of 22 times. If the sight of recruiters' stock challenging pre-crisis peaks strikes you as ominous, you will run for cover instead.

Land of nod

Japan is making one of its sporadic attempts to discourage employees from working such long hours. The health ministry, for example, will ban staff from its offices after 10pm, having failed to drive them away by switching the lights off. The initiative, inspired, one assumes by thoughts of a consumer-led recovery, can hopefully succeed without imperilling a rather more civilised tradition: sleeping during meetings. Such naps are frowned on in the west but permitted in Japan on the basis that if you work a 14-hour day you have to catch up on your sleep some time.

At any rate, that was the explanation after half the members of a business audience dropped off during a lecture on jet engines Lombard delivered in Tokyo a few years ago. This appeared to be some kind of local record, even on a muggy spring day. A colleague only managed to knock out a quarter of the auditorium with a talk on patents.

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