9th March 2023, London – Shell announced today it paid outgoing CEO Ben van Beurden £9.7 million in 2022, 294 times the UK’s median salary.
The CEO stepped down in December, and today’s announcement covers his 2022 pay. Van Beurden may still be set to get an extra £2.13 million this year to advise the company, and for “loss of office.”
Shell made a record £33 billion in 2022. Most of van Beurden’s pay, which was 50 percent higher than in 2021, came from performance-based bonuses.
Shell’s announcement comes at a time when people across the UK are struggling with a cost-of-living crisis, including high energy bills. In 2022, the median UK salary was £33,000, only 0.3 percentage of what van Beurden made in that year.
During his eight years heading Shell, van Beurden helped the company expand in Russia, before it pulled out of the country after the invasion of Ukraine.
Alice Harrison, Fossil Fuels Campaign Leader at Global Witness, said:
"Shell’s CEO earnt in one year what a typical UK worker would earn in six lifetimes. Surely most of us can agree that one person shouldn’t be able to amass such huge wealth on the back of fossil-fuel funded war in Ukraine and a global energy crisis?
It's a sign of just how broken our energy system is that Shell and other fossil fuel companies have made record-breaking profits from an energy crisis that’s forcing families to choose between heating their homes and putting food on the table.
We’re calling on the UK government to implement a people-first windfall tax in next week’s Spring Budget, which includes executive bonuses. And to ensure a rapid transition to homegrown renewable energy sources that are cleaner and cheaper than oil and gas, and better for energy security. We can’t afford to keep on propping up an industry that prioritises the profits of the wealthy few over the basic needs of ordinary people."
Note to Editor
Information was released at 07:00 AM GMT in Shell’s annual report, page 185.