The Guardian: Notebook: Time to grow up
This is the firm that snatched an exploration licence for the Indian state of Rajasthan from Shell for the comical price of £10m – just before Shell owned up to its serial over-statement of its reserves. Cairn proceeded to make a string of discoveries…”
8 Sept 04
In these days of heady oil prices, it was strange to see an oil company reporting a 40% slump in half-time profits yesterday. But then Cairn Energy is not a normal company – or at least Cairn has enjoyed a rather abnormal year.
This is the firm that snatched an exploration licence for the Indian state of Rajasthan from Shell for the comical price of £10m – just before Shell owned up to its serial over-statement of its reserves. Cairn proceeded to make a string of discoveries in Rajasthan and seems to have identified up to 400m barrels of recoverable crude in a field that may contain 2bn barrels.
Investors have responded by setting Cairn’s share price ablaze and yesterday – with the company’s market capitalisation up from about £500m to £2.3bn in the space of nine months – the company was confirmed as a new member of the FTSE 100 index.
Which is where this corporate fairy tale begins to get a little uncomfortable.
Bill Gammell, the Scottish rugby international and student friend of President Bush, has a colourful reputation – befitting a man whose job involves searching out resources in some of the world’s more inhospitable places.
But his business smacks of being something of a one-well wonder rather than the stable and sober recipient of all that pension and insurance money that supports the top flight of listed British companies. Footsie status is about more than market capitalisation. It brings a raft of new responsibilities, such as for corporate social responsibility, intensity of City investment research, boardroom governance, managing investor expectations, and so on.
It is not clear that Cairn’s executive team have fully grasped this yet. Yesterday, for example, the company seemed to have difficulty explaining why exactly profits are down so sharply at a time when crude oil is the hottest commodity on the block. Instead, all the focus seemed to be on when and where the next big share price-pumping exploration find might materialise.
Mr Gammell’s firm has come a long way in a very short space of time. It now has some maturing to do.
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: 
MORE DETAILS:
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
