BP-Shell Megadeal Would Create European Rival to Exxon Mobil
If Shell Plc were to acquire BP Plc, it would be among the largest deals in European history, creating for the first time a European oil major that could challenge industry leaders Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.
The circumstances for such a takeover might not be auspicious for BP — its shares have lost almost a third of their value in the last year and investors are unconvinced by the company's turnaround plan — but the deal would be transformative for Shell.
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When serial entrepreneur Damian Cox shunned university for skiing in the late 1990s and returned to London some five years later looking for a job, it was for anything other than being an estate agent. Cox had previously attended the now-closed Douai School in Berkshire, run by Benedictine monks, and says that around three quarters of his year went on to run their own businesses. 'There must be a direct correlation between the fact that we learned nothing, other than how to look after ourselves and maybe how to create something out of nothing,' says the founder and CEO of Wildstone, one of the world's biggest billboard companies valued today at £2bn. 'As a result, I think we all became quite entrepreneurial.' Read More: The boss who has found 'nature's answer to plastic' Growing up alongside a single mother and three sisters, Cox asked a recruitment friend for any upcoming vacancies and started as a development executive for a start-up called Blow Up Media, which signed up sites and put adverts on scaffolding. As its first UK employee, Cox witnessed scale firsthand as the firm reached a multi-million pound turnover in a few years. He also believed he was the 'worst paid person in the company'. This after negotiating its first sale of £80,000 per month. Following a meeting with the CEO and with no pay rise forthcoming, he left the firm. Cox co-founded a competing venture the next day, having already built a network of landlord contacts. He admits now to lacking business know-how, cash flow experience and, crucially, that being paid on the same day simply didn't exist. 'There was this sort of Gordon Brown-esque extended payment term of 30, 60, 100 days. So you had to pay your landlords on Monday and you didn't get your money for 100 days. And that was a very, very big lesson in business.' Over a year later, a business magazine profiled Cox and his business, EK Straas, which was seen by leading outdoor advertising companies JCDecaux ( and Clear Channel (CCO), the latter offering an undisclosed 'life-changing amount of money' despite not yet being profitable. Cox, 50, worked as a senior executive for Clear Channel for about a year but soon shunned the corporate world after witnessing what he says was a lack of ambition, innovation or growth. Instead, he challenged the consolidated outdoor billboard market with his next agency venture in 2004. Ocean Outdoor aimed to find the best assets and attract a greater revenue profile. Read More: Meet the company that finds 'must-haves' to make everyday life easier He negotiated a deal with a central London landlord on one of the highest profile banner sites by Tottenham Court Road station before erecting the first digital panel in Liverpool. 'The business snowballed from there,' says Cox. In 2010, he was effectively sacked from his start-up after bringing a chairman on board he failed to bond with and the market having suffered from the 2008 financial crisis. 'I was trying to be all things to all people without acknowledging what I'm really good and bad at. So maybe they made the right decision,' recalls Cox. 'But the market did return quickly and that was a pretty brutal learning for me. I'm very thankful today that it did happen because I wouldn't have Wildstone without that period of negativity.' Wildstone, his third venture he co-founded with Patrick Fisher in 2010, set out as a consultancy business as it first extracted revenue from landlords and took commission before becoming the world's largest media infrastructure company. 'We became successful very quickly, however you sometimes underestimate your own ambition. I didn't have the ambition to take over the world, but soon it became apparent that actually that's what I wanted to do again. 'I'm fortunate enough to suffer from ADHD which allows me to compartmentalise things easily. My mother was also a huge guiding force for me in lots of ways because I watched someone bring up four kids with nothing. I can't sit at home doing nothing. I love putting a creative vision in place and seeing if it's achievable.' Wildstone has acquired, upgraded and digitised super-sized billboard posts into architecturally-led designs. The Hammersmith-based firm, which employs 130 staff globally, was sold to private equity in September 2022 for around £1bn, with Wildstone now boasting around 5,500 billboards across the UK, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany, as well as Australia. 'People often see the other side, that you've made some money and it must be easy for you,' admits Cox, who lives in the Cotswolds and is an avid collector of emerging artists. 'But they don't see the 10 years of not sleeping or the anxiety that goes with it. Having a business bank account with £50,000 in it and you've got a wage bill on Friday of £400,000; those kinds of elements get lost in history and it's really difficult. 'I wouldn't underestimate that to anyone starting a company. You're navigating politics, revenue, cash flow, a market you can't control. And all of that has to come together in a way that allows you to move forward and survive.' Read More: The life lesson behind 335-year-old funeral business When the business was sold 12 years after being founded, Wildstone's leadership ensured a 'lump sum of cash' for every employee and further qualification for remaining at the company. Staff turnover remains small. Cox remained as global CEO after the sale, following several months of feeling 'deeply unhappy and depressed' after spending years scaling companies. Reinvigorated, he says that billboards today are 'still at the front of everything' when it comes to contextual advertising. 'It's the last broadcast medium that you can't swipe,' says Cox, who aims to grow Wildstone globally to the tune of a £15bn valuation. 'If it's on the side of a road you're driving down, you're going to see it. That for me makes it very attractive and we are becoming more and more valuable.' Helping a competitive market grow You do get slightly aggravated by the level of red tape, tax and constant desire by governmental bodies to take off you, which makes business harder as time goes on. In our industry, business rates are a prime example. Local authorities hate advertising, but they're happy to slap a 40-45p in the pound business levy on every advertising asset for doing nothing. Cash flow means you're very rarely positive for at least a couple of years on building one advertising panel. The benefit we have is that I am able to say that we own that infrastructure and I'll give you 100 billboards that are now digitised. I'll let you pay in arrears for the first quarter so you've got time to build up that cash flow to be able to pay. So actually our business makes the market wholly more competitive than it ever has been before. And it means that the stranglehold some of the bigger players have isn't necessarily as tight as they'd like it to be. We're able to push some of the smaller players up into the market. This is great because, after all, it's hard building a business. Read more: Meet the 'jokers from London' who sold 100,000 blocks of butter in first 10 weeks 'My sofa took six months to arrive — so I built a £20m business' 'I paid myself £4 an hour to get my Rollr deodorant off the ground'Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
