PERSONAL FILE

. To protect its lion's slice of the British gasoline market from hard-driving competitors, Shell-Mex & B. P. Ltd., jointly owned marketing arm of the Shell group and British Petroleum, turned to an articulate advocate of the hard sell. In as the company's managing director went John Emerson Harding Davies, 45, youngest man ever to hold the post. A World War II major who credits the British Army with "giving me an opportunity to develop initiative," ex-Accountant Davies likes to spend his time with salesmen in the field, argues that many decisions that used to consume management's time can now be taken by computers.

. Since he became president of Socony Mobil Oil Co. in 1958, determined Albert Nickerson, 50, has been moving steadily to overcome Socony's comparatively slow start in petrochemicals. A year ago, Nickerson tapped Chemical Engineer Paul V. Keyser Jr. to head Socony's new Mobil Chemical Co. Last week, to get into the booming British petrochemical market, Mobil Chemical offered to buy O. & M. Kleemann Ltd., a British plastics manufacturer, for about $20 million. Also in the works: a $20 million petrochemical plant in Italy, to give Socony a foothold in the Common Market.

. Spurred on by fast-moving President Malcolm MacNaughton, 51, Hawaii's Castle & Cooke Inc. launched a major push out of its home islands. The biggest of Hawaii's Big Five, Castle & Cooke has long concentrated most of its assets (now $117 million) in sugar land. Last week, mainland-born (Oregon) MacNaughton announced that C. & C. had completed arrangements to take over Dole Pineapple and Bumble Bee Brand Seafoods. Next MacNaughton targets: to decide whether to take up a Castle & Cooke option on 125,000 acres of Peruvian timberland, buy more food companies, get listed on the New York Stock Exchange

. While most major U.S. cities hope some day to play host to a World's Fair, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce President Harold C. McClellan effectively took Los Angeles out of the running just when some Angelenos were talking up their town as the site for a 1966 fair. A supersalesman who ran the U.S.'s highly successful 1959 exhibition in Moscow and lured the Dodgers away from Brooklyn, McClellan was driven into an unfamiliar downgrading role by a surfeit of success. "Los Angeles," he says, "is currently drawing more people than can easily be absorbed." To pay its share of the $65 million World's Fair cost, Los Angeles would also have to hike its already "staggering burden" of taxes, a price that McClellan does not feel would be justified by the temporary economic boost the city would get from fairbound tourists.

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