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From top to bottom, all of the Group's executives are carefully rated in the company's famed "Doomsday Book." a black book that is kept under lock and key, reviewed by the managing group every six months. The book gives the qualifications and career possibilities for 500-600 top people, plots many careers tentatively all the way through the 1960s, often clearly indicating the executive's final station. Beside each man's name are the names of one or more other men who are qualified to replace him. The book abounds in terse comments that may well decide a man's future: "A typical doman with pronounced leadership ability," "Sometimes tends to be arrogant." and "Both he and his wife have the requisite poise on the social side." The Group likes to have men ready for top leadership by 50 and retired at 60. If a man makes the managing group, he can expect to earn some $140,000 a year.
Awesome Monument. The Doomsday Book is a ready chart for the managerial future, but no guide to what tomorrow's leadership will face in the fierce battle for markets. Although the Shell combine is only seventh in the U.S., it maintains its overall lead in the fast-growing European market. It has 30% of the British market (Europe's biggest), has increased its share of the German market from 20% prewar to 25%, managed to hold its 21% share of the French market. But it is running into trouble elsewhere. Its share of the Italian market has dropped from 28% prewar to 22% under strong pressure from such newcomers as the Italian government-owned ENI. In Sweden, it has seen its market plummet from 29% pre war to less than 16%, partly because of the inroads of Russian oil. In Asia, the battle is equally rough. In Japan, the Group is clinging to its 10% share of the market in a pitched battle with eight ma jor competitors, six of them Japanese.
Besides its worldwide facilities and solid markets, the Group has one huge competitive advantage over the rest of the industry. It stepped into chemicals as early as 1928, was far ahead of the field when the postwar boom in petrochemicals came — and has stayed there. With 9% of its sales in chemicals, it is the world's biggest supplier of agricultural chemicals and insecticides, the biggest detergent maker outside the U.S. Its growth potential is almost unlimited: petrochemicals already account for more than half of the world's chemicals, and the proportion is expected to rise to 65% by 1965.
The Group has constructed an awesome monument to its chemical leadership in the 1,100-acre, $600 million refinery and chemical complex at Pernis, on the banks of the Nieuwe Maas seaward from Rotterdam. Built almost completely after the war, it is the Group's biggest industrial enterprise and one of the largest in Europe, handles some 16 million tons of crude oil a year and makes 600 different products. The plant is so highly automated that it is kept going at night by a staff of 500. In a sense, Pernis may be the last monument of its kind. The Group sees a trend to medium-sized refineries, expects the growth in demand — and therefore re fining capacity — to switch from Europe to Africa as the years go by.