Financial Times: Shell picks banks to advise on shake-up
“more evidence yesterday of its new-found willingness to embrace the outside world”
By Clay Harris
Jul 14, 2004
Royal Dutch/Shell offered more evidence yesterday of its new-found willingness to embrace the outside world by recruiting Citigroup and NM Rothschild to advise on its structural shake-up.
The oil and gas group was criticised fiercely for an inward-looking and unaccountable culture after it was forced to cut its proved oil reserves by more than 20 per cent. It rarely uses external financial advisers – except for transactions – so the appointment is a coup for the two banks.
Citigroup, whose investment bank was formerly known as Salomon Smith Barney, is no stranger. In 2002, it advised Shell on the £4.3bn acquisition of Enterprise Oil and £2.2bn purchase of Pennzoil-Quaker State, both prices including debt. It also advised on the 2001 purchase of stakes in Equilon and Motiva from Texaco.
Shell, moreover, has also seen Rothschild in action on the other side of the table as adviser to Enterprise. Execution of that mandate helped Rothschild win the accolade of European bank of the year from Acquisitions Monthly.
At the very least, investors have called on the company to scrap its 100-year-old dual-board structure and consider a traditional chief executive role. And Lord Oxburgh, chairman of the UK side of the business, has said the group is considering some “extreme structures”, which may mean even more money-spinning fun for Citigroup and Rothschild.
The banks join Slaughter and May and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the UK and Dutch firms that are legal advisers to Shell’s structural review team, headed by Sir John Kerr.
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
