Royal Dutch Shell

. In October 2003 it announced that it would become a carbon neutral business within ten years.[1]. The CMD is abolished under this new structure, board meetings will be more executive in character and there will (now) only be one "Shell" AGM, in one location, every year. Its new London headquarters are located in the award-winning 30 St Mary Axe tower, completed in 2004. in line with most other private sector oil companies) and most commentators have commented favourably on the change which they believe will establish a more transparent and accountable corporation. It was founded in 1863 by the forerunner of Credit Suisse. The new organisation structure follows a more conventional business model (e.g. It employs around 8500 people.

Others felt that the real power in Shell lay not with the two parent company boards at all but with the "Committee of Managing Directors" (CMD) which had no legal status, but nevertheless took all the key operational decisions. The company's headquarters are in Zürich, Switzerland. Some critics thought that as the two parent companies had separate boards, with separate memberships, this meant that there was a certain amount of (undesirable) independence of each of the companies from the other. Swiss Re is the world's second-largest reinsurance company (after Munich Re/ Münchener Rück), and the world's largest life and health reinsurer. The type of business structure now to be created was not possible under the relevant laws in 1907 when the Group was established, and the unique form of organisation that was then adopted by Shell, although durable, had come under criticism in recent years. On the 28th of June, 2005 investors in both "Shell Transport and Trading" and in "Royal Dutch" approved, at their Annual General Meetings, plans to merge the Group's dual-ownership structure and create a single company worth £120bn ($219bn).

On October 28, 2004, the company announced its proposal formally to merge Royal Dutch and "Shell" Transport and Trading into one entity, Royal Dutch Shell plc, to be "incorporated in the UK but headquartered and tax resident in the Netherlands." The new parent company's primary listing will be on the London Stock Exchange. Lord Oxburgh's comments were consistent with Shell's commitment to Sustainable Development, a commitment which was a key part of the reputation building efforts that the Group undertook after Brent Spar. "Sequestration is difficult, but if we don't have sequestration then I see very little hope for the world," he said. As a remedy he proposed the practice of carbon sequestration, which involves removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and burying it underground.

On June 17th of 2004, Shell chairman Ronald Oxburgh made a statement to The Guardian that in the face of the threat of global warming he was "really very worried for the planet”. The reserves issue led to the dismissal of the Group Chairman Sir Philip Watts , and the departure of the CFO and other top executives. This practice has since been discontinued. As a contributing factor, it was identified that in previous years the leading management's bonus payments were linked to the proven reserves base.

This corresponds to roughly 13% of the previous proven reserves base. The delayed Annual report and Accounts 2003 restated proven reserves reduced 6.648 mn USD in 2001 and reduced by 6.469 mn USD in 2002. Shell drew fire in 2004 when it had to perform a major recategorization of its reserves, admitting that a significant share of reserves previously booked as proven did not fulfill the requirements for proof under the US regulatory provisions. Five men were jailed in June 2005 for obstructing the construction of the pipeline through their lands.

The concerns lie in piping the gas, at high pressure, through inhabited areas. Natural gas is sometimes refined at source when offshore. In Ireland, Shell has drawn criticism by attempting to pipe unrefined gas from the Corrib Gas Field onshore and to refine it at a plant in north County Mayo. In Canada, Shell Canada settled a lawsuit in which an additive in their gasolines created problems on fuel gauges, especially in automobiles produced by DaimlerChrysler.

Shell eventually agreed to disassemble it onshore in Norway, although Shell has always maintained (supported by third party advice) that its original plan to sink the platform was safer and better for the environment. Shell was also challenged by Greenpeace for plans for subsea disposal of the Brent Spar, an old oil transport and hub station located in the North Sea, into the North Atlantic. When Saro-Wiwa was executed on trumped-up charges some of the world-wide condemnation of the act was aimed at Shell who by association was implicated. The political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa had implicated Shell during his “treason” trial by saying “…the ecological war that [Shell] has waged … will be called to question sooner than later and the …crime of the Company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.” Shell was also found to be providing money and supplies to the Nigerian military.

Shell's involvement in Nigeria came to the fore after the execution of dissident Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. Shell operates in Nigeria under the name Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). Mobil) it could be more of a force for good by staying in the country than by leaving. Shell always argued that unlike other multinationals who withdrew (e.g.

Annual General Meetings of the two Group holding companies were disrupted by protesters and Shell was also accused of sanctions breaking. In the 1970s and 1980s Shell was heavily criticised by anti Apartheid activists for continuing to carry out business in the Republic of South Africa. Over the years Shell has been criticized by environmental and human rights groups for a number of their operations, especially in South Africa and Nigeria. Commentators have pointed to the break of tradition in this appointment as Ollila will be the first Shell Chairman to be neither Dutch nor British.

The appointment will be effective from 1 June 2006. On 4 August 2005, the board of directors of Royal Dutch Shell plc announced the appointment of Jorma Ollila, currently Chairman and CEO of Nokia, to succeed Aad Jacobs as the company’s Non-Executive Chairman. An original investor, the largest single shareholder of Royal Dutch Shell is the holding company owned by the Dutch Royal Family, which was set up by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Although, to meet company law in all countries, there were executive and non-executive nominated directors of both Royal Dutch and Shell Transport and Trading , the Group had in fact been run by an executive body called the "Committee of Managing Directors" (CMD), whose members were the (executive) Managing Directors of the two parent companies.

Even now, likely for tax reasons, the company's shares are divided into two classes, A and B, representing the former Royal Dutch and Shell shares respectively. In many cases, subsidiary companies are held in partnership with other companies or governments. The Shell interest in subsidiaries is always divided 60/40 in favor of Royal Dutch. Shell Canada) also have local shareholders and are traded on local stock markets.

These two companies jointly owned all the operating companies in the group, although some (e.g. The two holding companies were the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc of the United Kingdom. Prior to unification on 20 July 2005, the group was a dual listed company. through 2004, and non-exclusively through 2006.

Shell may exclusively use the Texaco brand in the U.S. In 2001, Shell purchased about 13,000 Texaco stations and several refineries in the United States to permit Texaco to merge with Chevron Corporation.
. The Forestry business went the way of Nuclear, Coal,Metals and Electricity generation and was disposed of in 2003.

In recent years Shell has moved tentatively into alternative Energy with investments in Solar Power; Wind Power; Hydrogen and Forestry. However none of these ventures were seen as successful and all have now been disposed of. These diversifications have included Nuclear Power (a short lived and costly Joint Venture with Gulf Oil in the USA); Coal (Shell Coal was for a time a significant player in mining and marketing); Metals (Shell acquired the Dutch metals-mining company Billiton in 1970) and Electricity generation (a joint Venture with Bechtel called Intergen). Over the years Shell has occasionally sought to diversify away from its core oil, gas and chemicals businesses.

Agrichemicals) have now been disposed of following major restructuring to Shell Chemicals over the past ten years, but there is still a large core chemicals business within the company. Some of the Chemicals diversifications (e.g. The Chemicals business, involving the production and marketing of a range of hydrocarbon derived chemicals products, was also a logical step downstream from the processing of crude oil in the refinery. Similar competencies were required for Natural Gas which has become one of the most important businesses in which Shell is involved and which contributes a significant proportion of the companies’ profits.

The development of technical and commercial expertise in all the stages of this vertical integration from the initial search for oil (exploration) through its harvesting (production), transportation, refining and finally trading and marketing established the core competencies on which the Group was founded. Shell’s primary business was, and is, the management of a vertically integrated oil company. Shell has five core businesses: Exploration and Production, Oil Products, Downstream Gas and Power, Chemicals and Renewables, and operates in more than 140 countries across the world. One of the original Seven Sisters, Royal Dutch/Shell is the world's third largest oil company by revenue, and a major player in the petrochemical industry and the solar energy business.

Known as the "Pecten" after the sea shell on which its design is based (the giant scallop, Pecten maximus), the latest version of the logo was designed by Raymond Loewy and introduced in 1971. The Shell emblem is one of the most familiar commercial symbols in the world. By 1907 the company had a fleet of oil tankers. When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea area in 1892, the younger Samuel realised there was potential in exporting lamp oil from the region and commissioned the world's first purpose built oil tanker, the Murex, to enter this market.

In 1833, the founder's father, also Marcus Samuel, had himself founded an import-export business to sell seashells to London collectors. The origin of the brand name Shell is linked to the origins of The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company. .
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Shell is the world's third largest publicly traded Oil company based on revenues (After BP and ExxonMobil) and the second most profitable (after ExxonMobil) - (Fortune Global 500 2004). Under the old capital structure, Shell's ADRs were traded on the New York Stock Exchange under RD (Royal Dutch) and SC (Shell). The unification was completed on 20 July 2005. In November 2004 it was announced that that the Shell Group would move to a single capital structure, creating a new parent company to be named Royal Dutch Shell plc, incorporated in England and Wales, and with its principal listing on the London Stock Exchange but its headquarters in The Hague in the Netherlands.

In 1931, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the times, Shell-Mex merged their marketing operations in the UK (only) with those of British Petroleum to create Shell-Mex and BP Ltd a company that continued to trade until the brands separated again in 1975. In 1919, Shell took control of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 formed Shell-Mex Limited which marketed products under the “Shell” and “Eagle” brands in the United Kingdom. The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks are official) was a British company which dated back to 1897 and which had been founded by Marcus Samuel, and his brother, Samuel Samuel. Royal Dutch Petroleum Company had been founded in 1890 by Jean Kessler, along with Henri Deterding and Hugo Loudon, when a Royal charter was granted by Queen Wilhelmina to a small oil exploration company known as "Royal Dutch.".

Prior to unification, the group operated under a number of operating and shareholder agreements. Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij) and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc merged their operations to compete against the then-giant American oil company, Standard Oil. The Royal Dutch/Shell Group was created in 1907 when Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (legal name in Dutch, N.V. Shell has operations in 140 countries in the world, the biggest of which is in the United States where its operating company is Shell Oil Company, which has its head office in Houston, Texas.

Shell's revenues of $268 billion (2004) made it the fourth largest corporation in the world in 2004 and its profits of $18.18 billion made it the world's second most profitable business in terms of gross profits (calculations based on those numbers demonstrate a gross profit margin of 6.8%). Its corporate headquarters are in The Hague, Netherlands, with legal headquarters in London, United Kingdom. Shell also has a significant petrochemicals business (Shell Chemicals) and an embryonic renewable energy sector developing wind and solar opportunities. Royal Dutch Shell plc is a major energy company, one of the top four vertically integrated private sector oil/gas companies in the world (along with BP, ExxonMobil, and Total).

CFO: Peter Voser. CEO: Jeroen van der Veer.