Posts Tagged ‘Jorma Ollila’

WASHINGTON — Royal Dutch Shell Chairman Jorma Ollila on Thursday urged the U.S. Senate to make clear progress on legislation capping greenhouse gas emissions before international climate change negotiations in December.

By Bill Campbell (above), retired HSE Group Auditor, Shell International

On the subject of the integrity of Royal Dutch Shell Chairman, Jorma Ollila, raised by former Shell executive, Paddy Briggs, the information below was copied to Nokia yesterday, it should be self explanatory, if Nokia do not act they could find themselves guilty by association:

The attached information explains why Royal Dutch Shell along with the UK Oil Industry Health and Safety Regulator the HSE are currently being investigated by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in Scotland.

Mr Ollila is very much aware of this and can explain the details.

I raised these matters a long time ago (in 2007) with Ollila at the time he joined Shell, and his reply is also attached.

The reply from Ollila so contradicts the facts determined by the prosecutors in their ongoing investigation that it puts Ollila in personal jeopardy as being complicit in covering up alleged criminal offences.

You need to bring this to the attention of your Board.

Ollila has committed his organisation in RDS to co-operate with the investigation by the CPS and the Police.

I have for some weeks been asking Ollila to issue a statement that he now accepts that the press releases made by Shell in June 2006 were false and misleading, ignored the findings of their own internal investigation, and were highly defamatory to me.

He has refused to do this although this repeated failure supports my case put to the CPS and Grampian Region (Aberdeenshire) Police that Ollila be considered complicit in the covering up of criminal offences by his Executive Directors, what is termed as an *accessory after the fact.  That is usually defined as – whoever, knowing that an offence has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact; one who knowing a felony to have been committed by another, receives, relieves, comforts, or assists the felon in order to hinder the felon’s apprehension, trial, or punishment

This has implications to the good reputation of Nokia because Ollila is in simple terms your employee, an employee who sits at the pinnacle of the governance process not only of Shell but of Nokia, and a fellow not shy at being critical of the wrongdoing of others.

I note your Values, Code of Conduct etc etc as per your web site and all I would ask of Nokia in this matter is to honour your public statements.

The best way to get to the crux of all this unholy mess is simply to ask Ollila would he be prepared to reiterate the statements made on his behalf and that of the RDS board, see attached letter in 2007? I think you will find he would not.

Is he prepared in any way, shape or form to defend his reputation by taking action against me for defamation?  Surely he would do this if they were of no substance.  Again the answer I am sure will be no.

So the longer Ollila pontificates the more deeply into the mire he is engulfed and this will have implications for Nokia if you do not make any efforts to protect your reputation.

Perhaps your Board can get Ollila to look at this more objectively and help him to comprehend that it is not just his reputation that is at risk, not just that of RDS also, but through association Nokia.

Bill Campbell

Further email to Nokia from Bill Campbell sent 5 August 2009

http://royaldutchshellplc.com/

Correspondence and articles in this website are picked up regularly by Industry watchers and investment groups, note the comments about Ollila made by me and others, if you wish to reduce the risks to your reputation you need to act timeously

Bill Cambpell

By Paddy Briggs

Time to reflect on the integrity of Jorma Ollila (above), Chairman of the Board of Directors of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. In his time as Chairman it seems, if we judge from the actions of Shell’s new CEO Peter Voser, he has allowed Shell to become an over-staffed, unfocused, top heavy bureaucracy. A company that requires urgent and invasive surgery. A Company that no longer has confidence in its staff at the top to the extent that it makes them re-apply for jobs…and so on.

But also in Ollila’s time he has acquiesced to an unparalleled escalation in senior executive remuneration. His previous CEO and the other Board members have been paid an order of magnitude more than their predecessors. Isn’t this a reward for failure? And isn’t Ollila culpable for allowing it to happen under his watch?

Either Shell does need the drastic surgery that Voser is now instituting or it doesn’t. If it does Ollila should resign for getting Shell into its current crisis. If it doesn’t he should resign for having appointed a man as CEO who is hell-bent on destroying a once great company.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 

JUNE 25, 2009, 4:03 A.M. ET

By GUY CHAZAN

BP PLC said Thursday that it appointed Carl-Henric Svanberg, chief executive of Swedish telecommunications-equipment maker Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, as its chairman, finally bringing to an end the protracted search for a replacement for current Chairman Peter Sutherland.

AFP/Getty Images 

Carl-Henric Svanberg

The move mirrors the appointment of Jorma Ollila, then CEO of Finnish mobile-handset maker Nokia, as chairman of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP’s rival, in August 2005.

It shows how eager western majors are to position themselves as technology companies rather than straight-forward oil-and-gas producers, especially at a time when Big Oil is under pressure to help fight global warming by investing in green energy and high-tech solutions to climate change such as carbon capture and storage.

But the choice of someone from outside the energy industry, with no experience of running a major oil-and-gas company could raise some shareholders’ eyebrows.

The process of finding a replacement for Mr. Sutherland suffered a setback last year when BP shareholders came out against one of the leading candidates, Paul Skinner, then chairman of miner Rio Tinto PLC, because of his support for Rio’s $19.5 billion fund-raising deal with Aluminum Corporation of China Ltd.

Mr. Svanberg, 57, who is also chairman of Sony Ericsson and a nonexecutive director of Melker Schörling AB, will join the BP board as chairman-designate and a nonexecutive director on Sept. 1, 2009, the company said in a statement. He will succeed Mr. Sutherland as chairman on Jan. 1, 2010.

BP CEO Tony Hayward called Mr. Svanberg “a businessman of international stature who is recognized for his transformation of Ericsson.”

“Our shared views on many aspects of global business give me great confidence that we will work very effectively together on the next phase of BP’s progress,” he said in a statement.

Since Mr. Hayward took over as CEO of BP in 2007, he has embarked on a major restructuring of the company with the aim of trimming costs and improving safety and efficiency. “We are coming to the end of chapter one, restoring the fortunes and financial performance of BP,” Mr. Hayward said. “Carl-Henric is coming in as we embark on chapter two … creating a 21st century company.”

Ericsson said Mr. Svanberg will be succeeded by Finance Chief and Executive Vice President Hans Vestberg. Mr. Svanberg will remain on the Ericsson Board. Major shareholders InvestorAB and Industrivarden AB have said they want him to remain as a board member long-term.

—James Herron and Dominic Chopping contributed to this article.Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com

Scandinavia is one of the most secularised corners of the world and by reputation one of the most rational. So I was astonished last week to hear the Finnish chairman of Royal Dutch Shell (and of Nokia) Jorma Ollila, say that the world’s energy crisis would not be solved unless everyone turned off the lights when they left an empty room.

Job will also go on the road to meet critics who are demanding his resignation in the wake of the vote.

The Times

May 23, 2009

Patrick Hosking

Shell said that it had already agreed to some changes in its pay arrangements before the defeat on Tuesday but would consider wider reforms.

Shell awarded 78,889 shares to Van der Veer worth about 1.34 million euros ($1.8 million) while Chief Executive Officer- designate Peter Voser got 39,656 shares under the same program. Shell paid out shares worth 4.2 million euros to its five directors, David Williams, a spokesman based in The Hague, said in a phone interview today.

The decision by Royal Dutch Shell’s remuneration committee to overrule its own pay policy for top executives – for the second year running – looks terrible. Like Xstrata, whose shareholders on Tuesday lodged a significant protest against the mining company’s remuneration package, Shell has put itself in the line of fire. Where did they go wrong? Simple: the committee exercised its discretion twice in two years to grant shares that executives did not, under a strict interpretation of Shell’s own rules, deserve, and it did so without going back to shareholders.