A 4% dividend increase alongside share buybacks of $3.5bn for last three months of year awaits shareholders

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Shell has given its investors a multibillion-dollar windfall despite reporting weaker-than-expected profits of $23.7bn (£19bn) for last year as global oil and gas prices tumbled.

Shareholders of Europe’s biggest oil company are in line for a 4% dividend increase alongside share buybacks of $3.5bn for the last three months of the year.

Live coverage of business, economics and financial news as ECB cuts main interest rate by 0.25 percentage points in effort to support growth

It was a flash reading on the Eurozone economy, so we don’t have the details on what the drivers were. But it’s clear that it was a weak end to 2024.

But the European Central Bank might be able to spur a bit of economic growth in the eurozone with looser monetary policy.

This marks a weak end to last year, following positive growth in the first three quarters of 2024. As a result, first estimates suggest that the currency bloc as a whole grew by 0.7% in 2024. Declining activity in Germany – the Eurozone’s largest economy – has weighed on the bloc’s growth, with German GDP contracting by 0.2% on the quarter. This suggests Germany has now seen annual declines in activity for two consecutive years.

In 2025, further loosening of monetary conditions is expected to provide a modest uptick in activity for both Germany and the Eurozone, with growth expected to amount to 0.3% and 1.0% respectively.

Window snapping GNOME extension Tiling Shell —not that you need an introduction to it by now— adds a nifty new feature in its latest update. Tiling Shell v16 introduces Windows Suggestions, a feature the add-on’s author described as being able to “provide intelligent recommendations for other windows to tile, making window management smoother and more intuitive.” Per the GIF below, placing a window in a tile using the tiling system results in on-screen suggestions for other windows to tile in the the remaining gaps. If too many windows are open (so suggestions don’t fit within the available space) it’s scrollable. […]

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