Exactly 135 years ago, on 9 July 1890, a small and unknown company came to the Amsterdam Exchange: Koninklijke Nederlandsche Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Petroleumbronnen in Nederlandsch-Indi\u00eb (Royal Dutch Company for the Exploitation of Petroleum Wells in the Dutch East Indies). This was a start-up that had been founded shortly before, on 16 June 1890, and which later became better known as Koninklijke Olie. Nowadays we know this company as the well-known fund, Shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The IPO amount was certainly very modest considering its current status as a major multinational: 1.3 million guilders to be precise. For comparison: the VOC<\/a> raised 6.5 million guilders in its IPO in 1602. The amount of 1.3 million guilders was divided into 1,300 shares valued at 1,000 guilders each, of which 1,100 were freely tradeable. The IPO was a success and oversubscribed 4.5 times over. However, the price trend was disappointing in the first few years. In 1892, the price \u2013 then still expressed as a percentage of the nominal value \u2013 even fell to 28 percent at one point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exploitation of petroleum resources in the Dutch East Indies initially proved to be very uncertain. The technology regularly failed, while concessions were not always watertight contracts. After overcoming these teething problems, and especially after the discovery of a major oil well in 1899, the success story for the new listed company gradually began. And apparently, expectations after that discovery were already so high that Koninklijke Olie had to withstand a hostile takeover by John D. Rockefeller\u2019s American Standard Oil (Esso) shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The IPO of Koninklijke Olie in 1890 formed part of the so-called Second Golden Age<\/a> of the Amsterdam Exchange. This is a phase of development that has been occurring since the last quarter of the 19th century. Influenced by the belated industrial revolution, the Dutch economy was flourishing after difficult times, and there was a rise of domestic businesses. This was further reinforced by the abolition of the cultivation system in the Dutch East Indies, which also created more room for private initiative there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Due to the resulting increasing domestic demand for capital, the Amsterdam Exchange \u2013 originally known as a financier of foreign countries<\/a> \u2013 gradually became financier of the Netherlands. This is the period in which, for example, early predecessors of Heineken and ABN AMRO also came to the Amsterdam Exchange. As a result, the number of listed companies in Amsterdam increased more than eightfold (from approximately 115 to over 1000) between 1865 and 1900. This also includes many Dutch-Indian funds, of which Shell is of course the best known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this initial phase, Koninklijke Olie made even more frequent use of the Amsterdam Exchange. Between 1892 and 1907 \u2013 the year in which it entered into a close collaboration with British sector peer Shell Transport & Trading \u2013 ten additional issuances were made, together worth almost 40 million guilders. Much more money will be raised later at Beursplein 5. Thanks to the Amsterdam Exchange, the British-Dutch Shell gradually grew from a start-up in 1890 to a global player and one of the largest listed companies in Amsterdam after 135 years. An important side note here is that many still regret that the company has now become completely British, and that in 2022 the head office moved from The Hague \u2013 where it all started in 1890 \u2013 to London<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Op 9 juli 1890, vandaag precies 135 jaar geleden, komt er een klein en nog onbekend fonds naar de Amsterdamse beurs: Koninklijke Nederlandsche Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Petroleumbronnen in Nederlandsch-Indi\u00eb. Het gaat om een startup die kort daarvoor, op 16 juni 1890, is opgericht en later beter bekend is geworden als Koninklijke Olie. Tegenwoordig kennen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beursgeschiedenis.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}