The Corporate Name Shell Could Never Quite Escape
Opening:
Every company has skeletons in its cupboard.
Shell had an entire filing cabinet.
In 2005, following the reserves scandal, the company attempted what looked like the ultimate corporate reset. A new structure. A new parent company. A prestigious new name.
It should have been the beginning of a fresh chapter.
Instead, it became the beginning of one of the strangest branding disasters in corporate history.
The company escaped its past.
The past kept the name.
Then I’d structure it almost like a documentary.
Act I — A Name Born in Scandal
The reserves scandal.
Sir Philip Watts.
Walter van de Vijver.
The collapse of confidence.
The decision to rebuild the company under a new legal structure.
Act II — The King Was Really Forthdeal
The revelation that the magnificent new parent company had previously been the shelf company Forthdeal Limited.
Corporate grandeur meets Companies House paperwork.
Act III — Somebody Already Owned the Future
The registration of RoyalDutchShellPlc.com before Shell obtained it.
The moment Shell’s lawyers realised the front door was already occupied.
Act IV — WIPO Says No
The unanimous decision.
Shell’s argument that the names were identical.
The decision not to pursue a court appeal.
One legal defeat that has echoed for more than twenty years.
Act V — The Name Starts Fighting Back
Wrong emails.
Journalists.
Search results.
Written permission to deal with misdirected correspondence.
The irony becomes almost Shakespearean.
Act VI — The Curse Spreads to Sakhalin
Internal acknowledgements.
Russian attention.
Oleg Mitvol.
Billions of dollars of consequences, viewed through the lens of the Donovan archive.
Act VII — The Enemy Gets the Compliment
Reuters publishes perhaps the most astonishing internal quotation of them all:
“…an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out.”
That single sentence deserves an entire section because it perfectly encapsulates the unintended consequences of Shell’s long-running struggle with the Donovan websites.
Act VIII — The Great Escape
- 2022.
Shell quietly abandons the name.
Officially it was a corporate simplification.
Unofficially…
Well…
Readers can decide for themselves.
The closing paragraph
I already have one in mind.
Perhaps there never was a curse.
Perhaps there was simply a lesson.
Corporate names can be changed.
Logos can be redesigned.
Headquarters can move.
Executives can retire.
Websites can be challenged.
Search engines can evolve.
But history is remarkably resistant to rebranding.
And somewhere on the internet, “Royal Dutch Shell plc” still lives on—not in Shell’s annual report, but in an archive the company once tried to acquire, later tried to ignore, and ultimately left carrying the very name it had abandoned.
*This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment, the Shell DPA Files, "Shell and the Spies", the Shell Leaks files, as well as books written and published by John Donovan - Kindle eBooks. Timeline of the Donovan Shell Feud. Toxic History of Royal Dutch Shell Group. Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years. *All created and supported by internet wizz, Nick Gill.
