Time to get over Shell shock

NO ONE should underestimate the scale of the current crisis enveloping Shell/Royal Dutch Petroleum. The £88bn group is on the back foot and its reputation is being tarnished daily by a succession of leaks to the New York financial press.

Only a week after the group threw overboard two of its top executives - including chairman Sir Phil Watts - the management now running the show has come under the spotlight.

New chairman Jeroen van der Veer - seen as a safe pair of hands - and finance director Judy Boynton are alleged to have been among the top brass who knew about a shortfall in reserves and failed to fully disclose it to the main board or communicate it to investors in a timely way.

Shell finds itself caught by the climate of greater disclosure arising from the Enron debacle and has reacted like a frightened deer caught in the headlights of a car.

The audit committee has sought to calm nerves, but the Dutch executives sitting in The Hague appear to have little idea how to deal with the loss of confidence in management that has emerged on Wall Street and in the City.

Instinctively, the Shell approach is to put up the barriers. But there are some signs that the message is getting through. The external report into the overbooking of oil reserves by 20% - or 3.9bn barrels - is now complete and Shell is expected to publish it before the original target date of April 23, its annual general meeting.

There is also a move to bring forward the proposed reorganisation of the governance of the company, which had not been expected until next year.

The leaks of Shell's internal documents-together with its slow response to the allegations, is jeopardising the future of the refreshed management team. The last thing Shell needs at present is further resignations.

But unless it takes control of developments - by making early and full disclosure - it risks being caught up in a frenzy of speculation that can only do long-term damage to its reputation and its investors.

Psion revolt

DAVID Potter, chairman of Psion, could never have imagined the hornets' nest he would stir up when he decided to dispose of the group's stake in Symbian to Nokia.

Suddenly, he has had to recognise that many of the big and small shareholders on the register were not there because of their faith in Psion Teklogix - but because they saw Psion as a route to an economic interest in the Symbian operating system for handheld devices. For these, it was as if Cadbury had disposed of chocolate to concentrate on chewing gum.

Psion believes that when the sale comes to a vote at the Royal Society of Arts in London tomorrow it will romp home despite the opposition of its biggest outside holder Phoenix Asset Management.

Potter has been engaged in an intense lobby of institutions and even took the unusual step of calling on the Motley Fool website in an effort to convince private investors of his case.

Potter has convinced himself and no doubt some shareholders that they were under a misapprehension if they felt Psion and its partners could eventually float off Symbian.

This was not wanted by Nokia, which through the purchase of the Motorola stake had already increased its Symbian stake to 32.2%. As Symbian's biggest customer, it wanted to control the market for the new technology.

Clearly, the other owners of Symbian - which include Sony, Ericsson and Samsung - are far from enthusiastic about events.

No one should assume that the debate is over, even if Psion does win the day at the egm. Potter and the Psion board have not won many friends by their action and could face further attacks.

Savings debacle

IT is not proving a good week for the savings industry.

Hard on the heels of Penrose, the Treasury Select Committee gives the insurance industry a good kicking over the mis-selling of endowments. No doubt there were some appalling sales practices.

But the reality is that policyholders, as the TSC points out, have been let down by the actuaries put there to protect their interests.

Economists also might note that no one predicted a decade of low interest rates (after three decades of high inflation) which dramatically altered prospective returns. This has led to a shift away from saving to borrowing and consumption.

One supposes that if interest rates swing back on to a higher level, it is the borrowers who will be moaning that they were not warned when they ran up credit card bills and took on huge mortgages.