10-05-2025
Does it make sense for Shell to buy BP?
Tongues are wagging across the City about the prospect of a mega deal: a £200 billion tie-up of two historic London names, BP and Shell. To the average person, their logos are familiar from countless petrol stations. To many others, they are key dividend payers into pension pots. To the wider world, they own oil wells across the globe.
A merger of the two would create a European oil giant, but mark a dramatic decline in the fortunes of BP, which until 25 years ago, was known as British Petroleum and was a proud symbol of Britain's corporate success around the world.
BP traces its roots to an adventuring oil prospector who struck the deal of a lifetime when he uncovered vast deposits in Persia,
