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Chemical Reaction. The empire is run by a committee of eight managing directors, who have offices in both London and The Hague. They boast that they have never had to vote on a decision. Jan Brouwer, the chairman, is a tall, heavily built Dutchman with a taste for modern art, and the vice chairman is David Barran, whose monocle and Savile Row tailoring make him seem the archetypal upper-class Englishman. Most of the managing directors are bilingual, and some speak three or four languages. The only American, Monroe ("Monty") Spaght, who is also chairman of the U.S.'s Shell Oil Co., notes: "When some companies call themselves multinational, I say the hell with it. They haven't finished the first chapter of this book. We are clearly the most multinational of them all."
Royal Dutch/Shell managers calculate that global oil demand will grow at 7% to 8% a year at least until 1975. They figure that they are well placed to take more than their current share of the market, which ranges from one-sixth to one-third of all the gasoline, fuel oil, lubricants and aviation fuel sold outside North America. For the longer-term future, Shell's strategy is to seize a bigger proportion of the fastest-growing markets, which are in Japan and Continental Europe. Shell also intends to increase its stake in chemicals, in which it has already become the world's tenth largest producer. By the end of this century, Shell planners believe, oil may be almost as important a source of chemicals as of energy.
* Last week Shell Oil Co. reported first-quarter earnings down 23% from a year before. Unlike its parent, the U.S. company was squeezed by costs that rose faster than sales.