History of Exxon-Mobil Oil Company

Essay by yamonkb24High School, 11th gradeA-, May 2009

download word file, 2 pages 0.0

To trace the history of Exxon-Mobil Oil Corporation, we first need to go back to the formation of Standard Oil Company. John D. Rockefeller incorporated this company with Henry Flagler in 1870, and until it was broken up Standard oil was the largest, most profitable business in the world. However, in 1911, Standard Oil was forced to break up into 34 separate, unrelated companies by the Supreme Court.

Mobil Chemical Company was not formed until 1960 from Socony-Vacuum Corporation, which was made up of two separate companies in the first half of the 20th century. In 1976, Mobil Oil Corporation became the official name for Socony-Vacuum Corporation. From there Mobil went on to be the most influential Oil company in the entire world, along with Exxon. In 1984, Exxon Oil company topped the $100 billion mark for revenues for the first time. Exxon went on expanding until The Valdez Oil spill in 1989 off the small port city of Valdez, Alaska.

Finally, in 1999, Exxon and Mobil joined to form Exxon Mobil corporation. The merger shaved off approximately $4.6 billion every year in costs.

The merging of these two companies combined not only two enormous oil companies, but two entirely separate corporate cultures as well. Exxon had always been much stronger in finance and engineering than Mobil, and Mobil had always been, historically, a marketing giant and one of the best deal-cutting businesses of the late 20th century. Exxon was by far the more rigid of the two corporate cultures, being led by Lee Raymond to this point. Lucio A. Noto, the head of Mobil, was known for his charm and energy more than anything else, became the figurehead for the much more relaxed culture of Mobil.

In general, the Mobil executives were serving under the Exxon executives,