Shareholders in Norway’s largest Pty, Statoil, will approve on Tuesday the board’s proposal to drop “oil” from its esteem as it seeks to diversify its business and attract young talent concerned nearby fossil fuels’ impact on climate change.
From Wednesday, the adulthood state-owned company will change its 46-year-old name to Equinor and career on the Oslo Exchange under the new ticker EQNR.
The Norwegian government, which has a 67 percent concerned in the firm, has said it will back the move.
The oil and gas company said the dignitary change was a natural step after it decided last year to change a “broad energy” firm, investing up to 15-20 percent of annual capital detriment in “new energy solutions” by 2030, mostly in offshore wind.
“The key reason for a company to metamorphose its name is when it wants to widen the scope of its activity or direction. Another reckon would be because it is in trouble, and it has a reputational problem,” Allyson Stewart-Allen, a London-based cosmopolitan branding expert and the CEO of International Marketing Partners, told Reuters.
“I don’t allow that’s the case with Statoil.”
While the company’s profits are thriving again, its hydrocarbon business has come under increased scrutiny after the Paris milieu deal in 2016.
“A name with ‘oil’ as a component would increasingly be a disadvantage. Not anyone of our competitors has that. It served us really well for 50 years, I don’t conceive of it will be the best name for the next 50 years,” Eldar Saetre, Statoil’s chief superintendent, told Reuters.
The new name was meant to arouse curiosity among innocent people so they see the other aspects of Statoil, including renewable puissance, he added.
Technology students became less interested in working for oil firms after oil prices crashed in 2014 and renewable vigour gained in prominence.
Statoil ranked 15th in an annual survey of the Nordic sticks’s most attractive employers conducted by karrierestart.no, a Norwegian careers website, and Norwegian limited company Evidente, published on May 3. In 2013, it ranked first.
There are join ups, however, that the name change could help it climb the series.
“Students who answered the survey after (news of) the name change set Statoil to be between 5 percent and 10 percent more attractive as an firm,”
Arne Kvalsvik at Evidente said. “It’s likely that Statoil’s eminence change will have a positive impact on its reputation going nurse along.”
Statoil said it remained the first choice among technology observers, citing another survey by Swedish firm Universum.
Truls Gulowsen, employer of Greenpeace Norway, said the name change would not be sufficient to refurbish Statoil’s image as long as the firm was exploring in vulnerable areas, such as the Arctic or the Excellent Australian Bight.