BG deal set to define Ben van Beurden's tenure as Shell chief

The BG Groupdeal is Ben van Beurden's most audacious move and could come to define his tenure at the helm of Royal Dutch Shell.

The Shell chief executive is grappling with one of the most turbulent times for the energy industry, and the fact that he should see the current low oil price environment as a buying opportunity speaks to his boldness.

Mr van Beurden took over at Shell in January last year promising to improve the company's sputtering financial performance after a dark period in which it issued the first profit warning in its history.

Colleagues describe him as a man with a deeply commercial focus, unusual in a company with an identity shaped more by engineers than MBAs.

Yet Mr van Beurden himself is one of the engineers. The Dutchman joined Shell in 1983 after graduating with a masters degree in chemical engineering from Delft University in the Netherlands, and held a number of jobs across the company, spending 10 years in Shell's liquefied natural gas business.

In 2006, he was appointed head of the chemicals business. Peter Voser, Shell's then CEO, gave him four years to fix what was one of the worst-performing divisions - he would either turn it round or Shell would sell it.

The turnround worked: chemicals profits more than tripled between 2008 and 2012. It was largely because of his performance in that division that Mr van Beurden succeeded Mr Voser as Shell's top manager.

Colleagues say that Mr van Beurden takes a no-nonsense, dispassionate view of the company: all assets are disposable. It is a quality that could play a big role as he integrates BG and decides which parts of the combined company to shed: he has already promised $30bn of divestments.

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