News and information on Royal Dutch Shell Group
Shell has overhauled its UK legal team, appointing Sarah Morton as its new UK head of legal, replacing Michael Coates in the role.
Morton, who is also now associate GC for Shell’s downstream northwest Europe business, takes up her new role after nearly six years as Shell’s managing counsel for global litigation for Europe, Middle East & North Africa. In this role she built and managed a team of lawyers, recruiting from both inside and outside of Shell.
Sue Reisinger, Corporate Counsel: June 10, 2016
The announcement by Royal Dutch Shell that it plans to open an offshore legal operations center illustrates a growing trend, according to industry experts.
Facing an era of lower oil prices, Shell announced plans on June 7 to cut company costs and become more efficient. Part of those plans includes opening an offshore legal center, as have a few other companies and several major law firms. Shell legal director Donny Ching told the Law Society Gazette in London that the move would relate to “some specific parts of our work where it makes sense to consolidate services, increase efficiencies and reduce costs.”
After several global law firms made moves to consolidate legal staff abroad, Royal Dutch Shell is following suit.
The company is scouting possible locations and considering headcount numbers for a new offshore legal operations center, according to reports in the U.K. legal press.
Per Legal Business, the company’s legal director Donny Ching is leading the charge and plans to scope out geographies and come up with a plan by the fall.
The office is expected to house both lawyers and non-lawyers focusing on back-office functions as well as traditional legal work around contracts. For now, Ching is keeping his mind open about the fine details.
by Kathryn McCann: 31 May 2016
Royal Dutch Shell is preparing to open its own offshore legal centre to service the oil giant’s global operations.
A projects team, reporting to the company’s legal director Donny Ching (pictured), is currently scouting possible locations and considering headcount numbers for the centre, with a brief to come back by autumn.
A mixture of non-qualified and qualified lawyers will be doing more high-end work as well as the traditional back office work which is more typically suited to offshore centres. Potential locations for the centre will ultimately depend on whether Shell can recruit the right quality people in a particular area.
By John Donovan
Despite my forthright comments about Edward Heerema (the owner of the multibillion dollar ship Pieter Schelte), describing him a sinister individual who engages in shady financial machinations, I have not yet received a defamation writ.
Threats yes, but no writ.
Edward Heerema is one of the squabbling sons of Pieter Schelte Heerema, the offshore pioneer and former German Waffen SS officer/war criminal.
It could be because Allseas does not have my address, in which case they only need to ask me for it.
By John Donovan
PRELUDE DESIGNED BY SHELL LAWYERS? MORE IMPORTANT ROLE THAN ENGINEERS?
What will Bill Campbell make of the boasts from Shell’s chief lawyer Donny Ching, about the pivotal role of Shell in-house lawyers in the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, Prelude FLNG?
Extracts from an article about Donny Ching published by The Law Society Gazette on 5 December 2014:
Ching also believes that external law firms would have been no substitute for in-house lawyers in the work they did to build the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, Prelude FLNG.
To its credit Shell has not given in to the subsequent money demands, but neither has it apparently reported the matter to the Irish Police. One can see the difficulty. How do you go about asking the Irish police to investigate a blackmail plot over free alcohol worth over €35,000 given to the Irish Police accused of being “Shell’s Cops” and acting brutally towards people protesting against the controversial project?From: John Donovan <[email protected]>
Subject: OSSL BLACKMAIL PLOT AGAINST SHELL
Date: 16 November 2014 20:43:08 GMT
Cc: [email protected], Ed Vulliamy <[email protected]>, Lorna Siggins <[email protected]>, Dan Griffin <[email protected]>, Áine Ryan <[email protected]>, Paul O’Donoghue <[email protected]>, “Boucher-Hayes, Philip” <[email protected]>, Olga Cronin <[email protected]>, Erlend Skarsaune <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Shell Legal Director, Donny Ching
FROM LAW CAREERS NET: Prominent in-house appointments have made the news this month, with Royal Dutch Shell naming Donny Ching as its new legal director… As The Lawyer reported, Ching’s appointment at Shell followed the unexpected departure of legal director Peter Rees QC. Ching leaves his current role as general counsel for Shell’s project and technology group; to date, he has held positions within the business in Hong Kong, London, Qatar, Singapore and, most recently, the Netherlands.
See our link list of 452 articles by the FT, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, Dow Jones Newswires, New York Times, CNBC etc, plus UK House of Commons Select Committee Hansard records, information on U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission website etc. all containing references to our Shell focussed websites, or our website founders Alfred and John Donovan. Includes TV documentary features in English and German, newspaper and magazine articles, radio interviews, newsletters etc. Plus academic papers, Stratfor intelligence reports and UK, U.S. and Australian state/parliamentary publications, also citing our Shell websites. Click on this link to see the entire list, all in date order with a link to an index of over 50 books also containing references to our websites and/or our activities.
John Donovan, website owner
Head-cut image of Alfred Donovan appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA – HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
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:
MORE DETAILS: After a solicitor acting for Shell threatened to make the litigation "drawn out and difficult" with the intention of draining the resources of a financially weaker opponent, my late father (Alfred Donovan) and I decided to mount a wide-ranging campaign as a counter-measure. We jointly founded the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group, which nearly 15% of Shell UK retailers joined. We regularly conducted ethical surveys involving up to 1500 Shell petrol stations. All responses were opened and authenticated by an independent solicitor who supplied Affidavits confirming the results. In whole page announcements in trade magazines (examples above) we challenged Shell to commission and publish the resuits of independent research asking the same questions and offering respondents GUARANTEED anonymity. Shell never took up the invitation. Instead it asked the UK Advertising Standards Authority to investigate our Shell surveys. No problems were found. The head-cut image of Alfred Donovan appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. 
