Financial Times: OBSERVER: Circular Shell: Tuesday 28 June 2005

ABN Amro has invested considerable energy down the years in its relationship with Royal Dutch/Shell, the oil and gas giant whose shareholders are today expected to vote to scrap nearly a century of dual-headed governance.

The Dutch bank is itself the product of a patchwork of mergers since the late 19th century, most recently the 1991 union of the Amro (Amsterdam-Rotterdam) Bank and ABN (Algemene Bank NL).

It was a banker from one of the forerunners of Amro bank that dreamed up Royal Dutch/Shell's hydra-headed structure way back in 1907. When Shell's Dutch supervisory board sought an adviser on the unwinding of the cumbersome governance model there was only one candidate . . ABN Amro

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