They won't be cheering if he is made energy czar...
Greens cheer as Exxon boss retires
Mark Milner, Richard Wray and David Teather in New York
Friday August 5, 2005
The Guardian
There was a changing of the guard in the oil industry yesterday when Royal Dutch Shell named the outgoing Nokia chief executive, Jorma Ollila, as chairman, while the controversial head of Exxon Mobil, Lee Raymond, announced his retirement. Mr Raymond had angered environmentalists by denying any connection between global warming and human activity.
Mr Ollila will replace Aad Jacobs in the £500,000-a-year non-executive role, based in The Hague. He will take up his new role in June next year. His appointment, which will run for three years, marks a further step in the restructuring at Royal Dutch Shell in the wake of last year's reserves over-booking scandal.
Mr Ollila was selected after a process which included executives from the US, Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. His appointment is understood to have been approved unanimously by both the committee set up to find a new chairman and the Royal Dutch Shell board.
The 54-year-old Finn does not have oil industry experience but this is not seen as a drawback. "I think it is important that he has a lot of international experience in the global environment. He does not have to know everything about oil because his role will be to supervise the company as a whole," said one European fund manager.
Mr Ollila became Nokia's chief executive in 1992. He was instrumental in turning the 140-year-old Nokia from a sprawling conglomerate, which spanned a host of businesses from the production of paper pulp to rubber gloves, into the world's leading manufacturer of mobile phones. It finally pushed its rival, Motorola, into second place seven years ago.
Mr Raymond, 66, had already worked a year above Exxon's mandatory retirement age and will step aside at the end of this year. The company president, Rex Tillerson, 53, is expected to replace him.
Exxon is the largest firm in the US by market value; Mr Raymond led the $82bn (£51bn) takeover of Mobil in 1999 and was admired for his 12-year stewardship of the firm.
Critics argue that his biggest legacy, however, has been his scepticism about global warming and his opposition to the Kyoto protocol designed to reduce emissions.
"You couldn't imagine anyone worse on the issue of climate change than Lee Raymond, so there's really nowhere to go but up with his successor," said Andrew Logan, oil programme manager at Ceres, a coalition of large investors and environmentalists.
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