The Guardian: Notebook: Are big fines fine?
“Ever since the Financial Services Authority clouted Shell with a £17m fine, a debate has been raging about whether it is right that regulators levy hefty penalties on companies guilty of wrongdoing.”
8 Sept 04
Ever since the Financial Services Authority clouted Shell with a £17m fine, a debate has been raging about whether it is right that regulators levy hefty penalties on companies guilty of wrongdoing.
The argument against is that the fine hits shareholders, who should not be held responsible for errant management. The FSA’s chief executive, John Tiner, seemed to concede as much in a speech this week when he stated that the regulators’ fines should not be too onerous since shareholders would usually have been hit by a drop in the guilty company’s share price.
Of course, the overriding aim of the FSA’s fines policy is to provide a deterrent. As with the reaction to all the sexual and racial discrimination cases before the courts, when companies can see a clear potential liability – such as a multi-million pound damages award and a heap of bad publicity – they tend to adapt their behaviour. Big money focuses large companies like nothing else.
But Mr Tiner should come clean about what big fines also do: they help pay for all the regulators.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1299334,00.html
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
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.
