MONROE JACKSON RATHBONE
IN Houston this week the last steelwork was put in place for a 44-story skyscraper, the tallest building west of the Mississippi and the headquarters of a U.S. oil giant: Humble Oil & Refining Co. The giant is the creation of another giant, Standard Oil Co. (N.J.), the world's largest oil company. Its building symbolizes the fulfillment of a longtime dream of Jersey Standard's president and chief executive, Monroe Jackson Rathbone. Quietly and almost unnoticed, tall (6 ft. 3 in.), brainy Jack Rathbone, 60, has carried off one of the biggest corporate reorganizations in history. Into Humble, long the producing subsidiary of Jersey Standard, he has integrated five of Jersey's U.S. regional subsidiaries (Carter, Oklahoma Oil, Pate, Esso Standard and Enjay) to form a single marketing and refining organization, the nation's biggest energy producer.
Jersey Standard, a huge holding company, created a more powerful Humble (named after a town near the firm's wells in Texas) in order to have a company that can sell its products on a nationwide basis. The 1911 antitrust decision that broke up Standard Oil forbids the five remaining regional companies to invade one another's territories with brand names derived from the words Standard Oil. Thus Jersey Standard's popular Esso brand gasoline (from Eastern states Standard), for example, was kept away from Sohio (Standard of Ohio) territory and Calso (California Standard). By breaking its shackles, Jersey Standard will be able to develop a single brand name to be pushed nationally. Already it is using Humble along with Esso and the names of the other five companies in ads. While plugging Humble, it is not sure whether this should be the nationwide name. Another possibility: Enco (for energy company), now being tested.
Standard's Jack Rathbone is used to dealing on a big scale. From his corner office on the 29th floor of Manhatten tan's RCA Building, he directs a worldwide organization consisting of 48 affiliates in 34 countries, 146,000 employees and 53 refineries on five continents— all of which provide 18% of the world's total oil consumption. Despite a worldwide oil glut, Jersey Standard managed to raise its earnings 6½% to $2.62 a share in 1960's first ten months.
Like all top oilmen, Rathbone must be a combination of secretary of state, technician, international socialite and world economist. He has to worry about everything from the dumping of cheap Russian oil on world markets ("aimed at creating dissension and undermining the economies of free nations") to the lightning-quick onslaught of national revolutions (he got out of Iraq and Lebanon just before fighting broke out in each place). He must be ready to chat with the Duke of Edinburgh about how to bring up children, which he did recently at the dedication of a British plant, or sacrifice his digestion to insistent entertainers, as he did on a 50,000-mile, three-week trip to Africa that included no luncheons, dinners and cocktail parties. Rathbone has also elevated TV standards by having Standard sponsor the controversial Play of the Week last year and a current Shakespeare series called An Age of Kings, insisting on the view, radical to most corporations, that Standard leave complete control of the program to producers.