Word: profitted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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SHELL, No. 2 in oil and the biggest business of any kind based outside the U.S., increased profits about 9% last year, to $2.3 billion-almost as much as Exxon earned on far greater sales. Of all the Sisters, Shell seems best suited to benefit from the trend toward getting a larger share of profit from refining and marketing. The firm has long concentrated on those areas, to the point that outside the U.S. it buys around 60% of its crude from other companies. Says Shell's European coordinator Jan Choufoer: "Adding value to bought crude is the name...
...that end, Shell has gone farther than any of the Sisters toward "whitening" its production-that is, squeezing more high-profit gasoline, kerosene and other light fuels out of each barrel of crude. It is also profiting handsomely from its 30% interest in the large natural-gas fields in The Netherlands...
MOBIL seems to be doing just about everything right. Its profits rose 7.5% last year, to just over $1 billion, and another 16% in the first half of 1978. Traditionally strong in marketing, it has been leading the swing to self-service gas stations in both the U.S. and Europe; indeed, it was the only Sister to earn a profit last year in the fiercely competitive West German market...
BRITISH PETROLEUM, 51% owned by its government, raised operating profits 6% in 1977, but capital-gains taxes cut total net about 10%, to $531 million. In this year's first quarter, its earnings fell 44%, the probably temporary result of lower prices for North Sea crude and of marketing losses in Continental Europe. BP, which has total operating freedom from the politicians in Whitehall, has long emphasized crude production over marketing. The company produces the "blackest" barrel of oil in Europe-that with the largest proportion of low-profit heavy fuel-and early this year closed its biggest refinery...
...being aggressively traditional. Following a Wall Street fashion, Lehman and other firms have been busy turning themselves into financial "supermarkets" that do everything from securities trading and corporate advice to merger brokering. Yet Lazard has remained a loosely structured group of partners; it aims to avoid large-volume low-profit activities like brokerage and remain a "deal" firm specializing in big corporate sales and mergers. A recent Lazard achievement: it put together Chrysler's sale of its European operations to Peugeot. While, at larger firms, the earnings from such deals are typically shared by all the partners, at Lazard...