Anger at Shell’s golden handcuffs
- The Observer,
- Sunday May 11 2008
Royal Dutch Shell is facing a showdown with investors over its plans to pay £3m to directors simply to stay on the board for three years.
The oil giant is giving shares equivalent to their annual salary – around £1m each – to finance director Peter Voser, exploration and production director Malcolm Brinded and gas and power director Linda Cook ‘to enhance retention ahead of the forthcoming board successions’. Chief executive Jeroen van der Veer is due to retire next June, while Robert Routs, head of its downstream and chemicals business, will leave by the end of the year. Shell is keen to keep the three directors on board to ensure continuity.
But one investor said the payments were pointless: ‘I have not seen a business it works [as a retention tool] in. The executives still leave.’
Corporate governance monitor PIRC is also recommending that its members vote against the remuneration report, saying: ‘PIRC does not support the use of retention awards, in particular when no performance conditions are applied.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/11/oil.royaldutchshell1
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.
