The fiduciary management of the six pension funds of oil major Shell, which are currently managed by Shell Asset Management Company (SAMCo), will be transferred to Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM). A third of SAMCo’s employees are to join GSAM, with the rest being made redundant, according to sources.
In a brief response, Shell said its six pension schemes take decisions on their investment policy independently, suggesting it did not have a say in their collective decision to transfer their pension assets to GSAM. These funds include Shell’s US and UK defined benefit (DB) schemes, with the latter being by far the largest, with over £15bn (€17.5bn) in assets under management.
However, the decision does mean that most of the 160 employees of SAMCo, a subsidiary of Shell, will have to look for another job.
According to a Shell spokesperson, discussions are currently taking place with SAMCo’s workers’ council “about what this means for employees”. A source within the asset manager told IPE that a redundancy scheme has already been drawn up.
According to asset management sources, GSAM is willing to take over a third of SAMCo’s employees as part of the deal. This is said to have been a key reason GSAM won the mandate. The asset manager, which has a large office in The Hague where SAMCo’s headquarters are located, declined to comment.
BlackRock
SAMCo was founded in late 2005, with the aim of centralising the asset management of around 200 small Shell pension funds around the globe. SAMco’s future had already come under pressure after Shell’s closed Dutch DB fund – the firm’s largest pension fund with €27bn in assets under management – switched to BlackRock for fiduciary management in September.
Shell’s other Dutch pension fund, which runs a defined contribution (DC) arrangement, had moved to Achmea Investment Management for fiduciary services many years ago.
Unexpected
Still, the decision to wind down the firm seems to have come quite unexpectedly for SAMCo. The firm’s 2023 financial statement said that “no significant changes to the business or the organisation are expected in the immediately foreseeable future”.
Moreover, SAMCo’s workforce still expanded from 142 to 159 full-time jobs that year.
SAMCo had more than €70bn under management for various pension organisations within Shell by the end of 2023 — before the departure of the Dutch Shell scheme.
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