Exxon Mobile

Type: Public (NYSE: XOM)
Founded: 1999 (merger) 1911 (Standard Oil of New Jersey) 1911 (Standard Oil of New York) 1870 (Standard Oil) br>Headquarters:
Key people: John D. Rockefeller, founder of the original Standard OilRex W. Tillerson, Chairman/CEO
Industry: Oil and Gas
Products: Fuels, Lubricants, Petrochemicals
Website: www.exxonmobil.com

General Information

Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), a multi-national American corporation and a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, is the largest publicly traded integrated petroleum and natural gas company in the world, formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. ExxonMobil is the world's largest company by revenue, at $377.6 billion in its fiscal year of 2006. It is also the largest corporation by market capitalization, at $517.92 billion on July 20, 2007. It is the largest of the six oil supermajors with daily production of 6.5m boe (barrels of oil equivalent). ExxonMobil ranks first in the world in proven oil and gas reserves among corporate oil producers, though it is still eclipsed by several of the largest state petroleum producers

Business Model

The Exxon Mobil Corporation global headquarters are located in Irving, Texas. ExxonMobil markets products around the world under the brands of Exxon, Mobil, and Esso. It also owns hundreds of smaller subsidiaries such as Imperial Oil Limited (66% ownership), an oil retailer in Canada, and SeaRiver Maritime, a petroleum shipping company.

The upstream division dominates the company's cashflow, accounting for approximately 70% of revenue. The company employs over 82,000 people worldwide, as indicated in ExxonMobil's 2006 Corporate Citizen Report, with approximately 4,000 employees in its Fairfax downstream headquarters and 27,000 people in its Houston upstream headquarters.

Critisism

Investigative reporting by Forbes Magazine raised questions about ExxonMobil's dealings with the leaders of oil-rich nations. ExxonMobil controls concessions covering 11 million acres (44,500 km²) off the coast of Angola that hold an estimated 7.5 billion barrels (1.2 km³) of crude. Forbes alleged that ExxonMobil handed hundreds of millions of dollars to the corrupt regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos in the late 1990s.

In 2003, the Office of Foreign Assets Control reported that ExxonMobil engaged in illegal trade with Sudan and it, along with dozens of other companies, settled with the United States government for $50,000.

In March 2003, James Giffen of the Mercator Corporation was indicted, accused of bribing President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan with $78 million to help ExxonMobil win a 25 percent share of the Tengiz oilfield, the third largest in the world. On April 2, 2003, former-Mobil executive J. Bryan Williams was indicted on tax charges relating to this same transaction. The case is the largest under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This series of events is depicted in the film Syriana.

In a U.S. Department of Justice release dated September 18, 2003, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that J. Bryan Williams, a former senior executive of Mobil Oil Corporation, had been sentenced to three years and ten months in prison on charges of evading income taxes on more than $7 million in unreported income, including a $2 million kickback he received in connection with Mobil's oil business in Kazakhstan. According to documents filed with the court, Williams' unreported income included millions of dollars in kickbacks from governments, persons, and other entities with whom Williams conducted business while employed by Mobil. In addition to his sentence, Williams must pay a fine of $25,000 and more than $3.5 million in restitution to the IRS, in addition to penalties and interest.