By Wilt Staph
Shell is the least courageous of all the oil majors when it comes to acquisitions. The over-priced takeover of Enterprise Oil aside Shell has stood on the sidelines whilst all of its competitors, without exception, have concluded huge scale takeovers/mergers in the last ten years. The reason for this reluctance is not hard to find essentially Shell has always been the most risk averse of the majors. This came partly from the companys historic size which led to complacency (it was once the largest corporation in the world in any sector) and secondly from its utterly conservative and Calvinist mindset. The Dutch and the British have one thing in common – something that is reinforced when they come together diffidence tempered by a curious lack of ambition and audacity. Everything has to be quantified to the nth degree and by the time that the spreadsheets have finished whirring someone else has moved in and stolen the deal.