Daily Telegraph (UK): The Royal Dutch Shell boss: “Mr van der Veer proved to be a steady hand as he steered the company through four more revisions of its oil and gas reserves until Shell announced yesterday that it had overstated its oil and gas by a third.” (ShellNews.net) Posted 5 Feb 05
Jeroen van der Veer, 57, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, was ambling towards retirement last year running Shell's chemicals operation when he was put into the top job after Sir Philip Watts stood down after the scandal over "lost" oil and gas reserves.
In the following months, Mr van der Veer proved to be a steady hand as he steered the company through four more revisions of its oil and gas reserves until Shell announced yesterday that it had overstated its oil and gas by a third.
Mr van der Veer has not ducked the difficult decisions, announcing in October that Shell is scrapping its controversial dual structure by setting up a single HQ in Holland and listing all of the company's shares in London.
As chief executive of the combined company, he said he has no intention of standing down after unification this year.
BP's heavyweight CEO
Russia has its oligarchs. Britain has Lord Browne of Madingley, the buccaneering chief executive of BP, who bestrides the European oil and gas industry and was spotted holding court at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
Lord Browne, 57, transformed the former British Petroleum business in the 1990s era of cheap oil into a world beater with a string of opportunistic takeovers, such as snapping up the US oil companies Amoco and Arco.
In the 10 years since he took over as chief executive of BP in 1995, Lord Browne has become Britain's most respected businessman, running a company which is valued on the stock market at over £100 billion.
Lord Browne, who is due to retire in Feb 2008, shows no signs of slowing down. He is expanding his horizons to look for more oil and gas in hitherto untouched prospects for a western oil company in Russia and central Asia.