British Standard Oil
THE ANGLO-PERSIAN Oil Company has come a long way since Winston Churchill bet on it. As First Lord of the Admiralty, he spent £4 million of taxpayers' money to buy 40 per cent of its shares, and gave it the con- tract to supply his oil-fired battle-fleet. These days it is British Petroleum and it seems to have a mission to reintegrate John D. Rockefeller's empire. It already owns his Standard Oil Company of Ohio (Sohio for short) and is now collecting Amoco, which was the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. On to New Jersey, where Standard Oil became S.O. and then Esso and now Exxon, the biggest oil company of all! The Amoco deal comes labelled as the world's biggest industrial merger, and is in the mod- em style: no corporate raiding, no shot and shell, intense manoeuvring for the top jobs, and agreement on the first ambition, which is to run the combined company with fewer people. American banks have been merging on these terms like mating mastodons, and Sir Brian Pitman of Lloyds is looking for- ward to the mating season here.
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