Mr Voser will have served five years as chief executive by the time he steps aside next year at age 55. A person with direct knowledge of the situation said Mr Voser approached Shell's board "saying for personal reasons he wants a change”. The board and Mr Voser agreed he would leave next year. "This is not acrimonious," the person said. Shell said Mr Voser wasn't available to comment.
The company said Mr Voser will continue as CEO until the first half of 2014, and its board is searching for a successor. Shell said Thursday it will evaluate internal and external candidates for the job. People briefed on the matter said they expect the board to pick an internal candidate to succeed Mr Voser, with top candidates including chief financial officer Simon Henry and exploration and production executives Marvin Odum and Andrew Brown.
Shell improved several key performance measures under Mr Voser's leadership but also saw its share price stall in recent years, thanks in part to the unrealised potential of the long-term investments made on his watch. Shell Class B shares traded at £23.36 in London on May 3, 2011; they closed at £22.77 Thursday. They are up from £15.56 on July 1, 2009, when Mr Voser became CEO. A spokesman said some of those long-term projects will become productive this year.
Mr Voser joined Shell in 1982, left for an executive position with ABB 20 years later and returned to Shell in 2004 as chief financial officer. He took over as CEO in 2009, beating out two other rivals from Shell's executive ranks to win the position. He was chosen in part for his background in finance, rather than oil exploration, because the company was aiming to become more fiscally disciplined.
He moved quickly to streamline the company, consolidating divisions and cutting 150 of Shell's 750 senior executive positions. He made plans to eliminate about 5000 jobs in his first year. Shell now has about 87,000 employees, its current CFO, Mr Henry, said Thursday, down from the "high 90,000s" around the time Mr Voser took over.
Mr Voser also continued Shell's strategy of trying to dominate the global natural-gas business, a decision that has seen Shell expand its gas capabilities at a time when US prices plunged due to the shale-gas boom.
Under Mr Voser, Shell has "moved from a rebuild and reconstruction phase to a more steady state," Mr Henry said Thursday. Shell's operational performance has been solid under Mr Voser, said Macquarie analyst Jason Gammel. But investors haven't rewarded the company the way they have rival Chevron, in part because the natural-gas bet hasn't been as profitable as investing in oil production.
Mr Gammel said Shell's continuing investments in "mega-projects" under Mr Voser have tied up the company's cash. Over the past few years, several such projects have come online after years of development, boosting production. While investors were hoping for spending to decline recently, Mr Gammel said, Shell has instead continued pouring cash into giant developments like natural-gas fields in Australia and a troubled offshore exploration project in the US Arctic, eating into profits. Mr Henry said he expects Shell's annual capital expenditures to be near $US34 billion until 2015.
"That capital, it goes out and we don't know what sort of return we're going to get, not for many, many years," said Johnny Russell, an investment director with Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Ltd., Shell's fourth-largest shareholder, with more than $US2 billion worth of stock as of May 1, according to FactSet. Mr Russell said that while he has been generally pleased with Mr Voser's leadership, companies across the energy industry are feeling pressure to boost shareholder returns.
The announcement of Mr Voser's retirement came as Shell beat analysts' earnings expectations, posting a rise in first-quarter profit largely due to improved refining margins.
Shell said earnings on a current cost of supplies basis, which excludes gains or losses in the value of inventories and is equivalent to net profit reported by U.S. oil companies, was $US7.95 billion in the three months ended March 31, up 3.6 per cent from $US7.68 billion a year earlier. Group revenue fell to $US112.81 billion from $US119.92 billion.
Excluding gains or losses from one-time items such as asset sales, the company's profit rose 3 per cent to $US7.52 billion. That was above expectations of $US6.5 billion in a Dow Jones Newswires poll of 10 analysts.
"Oil prices have fallen recently but Shell is implementing a long-term, competitive and innovative strategy against this volatile backdrop," Mr Voser said in a statement.
Total oil-and-gas production increased very slightly to 3.56 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.
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