At the beginning of 2022, Shell relinquished the Royal designation because it became a fully British company for tax purposes. A factor that may have played a role in that decision was the Dutch dividend tax.
An earlier attempt by Rutte to abolish that tax had met with great social outrage, after which he did not dare to make a second attempt. If that was indeed the deciding factor for Shell, then it was one of the few times that the company got zero on a political appeal.
That can be figured out High game by Marcel Metze. Note the adjective political in the subtitle. Of High game on which Metze worked for 25 years, assisted by a team of researchers, he wrote a history of Shell with an emphasis on how It what and the Who of the influence that the company exercised in the political field of influence in which it operated.
For Shell, ‘free market’ means the absence of burdensome government interference
Henri Deterding (1866-1939) developed Shell from a producer of lamp oil into a globally active oil giant. From the moment it became one of the greats, Shell interpreted ‘free market’ as an absence of burdensome government interference and not as an area of free competition. Because despite anti-trust legislation, it continued to try to make price and production agreements with other major oil companies.
Metze delves deep into Shell’s machinations when first Rhodesia and later South Africa were put under pressure with international embargoes because of their apartheid policy. How Shell circumvented it can be read as ‘a handbook for cover-up’ of illegal and/or shameful activities. Shell’s adage, in the words of the then CEO: “You don’t leave, but do what you can get away with.”
When Joop den Uyl (PvdA) became minister and later prime minister, Akzo chairman Krayenhoff thought that Akzo, Shell, Unilever and Philips would do well to counterbalance left-wing political influence by making their own people available for political positions. For example, Shell employee Frits Bolkestein made the transition to parliamentary politics: in 1978 he was installed as a member of parliament for the VVD. With regard to such political secondments, former Shell CEO Wesseling spoke rather condescendingly about ‘managers at a dead end, who no longer had much career prospects in their companies’.
As a political actor, Shell is a heavyweight that is used to getting its own way
Since the 1980s, Shell has been one of the exponents of shareholder capitalism, although according to Metze, the management has not only thought in terms of annual profit, share price, dividend payment and bonuses in recent years, but also the long term of energy transition and greening.
In practice, however, it appears to regard the approach to the enormous problems that Shell has helped to cause – environmental pollution as a result of the extraction and processing of oil and gas and subsidence to name a few – mainly as a matter for company lawyers and pr department. The first to challenge or evade liability using delaying tactics, the second to generate positive imagery.
Shell is a company focused on making as much profit as possible. Some believe that they can conclude from this that Shell does not engage in politics. With this well-written history, which paints a detailed and nuanced picture, Metze shows how much Shell as a political actor is a heavyweight that is used to getting its own way.
Title High Game – The Political Biography of Shell
Author Marcel Metz
Publisher balance
Price 34.95 euros ( 632 pages)
★★★★☆