New Faces at Exxon

It was something of a tradition at Exxon that the men who reached the top jobs there could trace their careers back to more or less rough-and-tumble beginnings in the oilfields. That was certainly true of big (6 ft. 2 in.), craggy, Canadian-born John Kenneth Jamieson, Exxon's chairman since 1969, who started out in the oil business in the 1930s as a laborer in a small refinery in Calgary, Alberta. Last week's announcement that Jamieson, now 64, will retire on Aug. 1 signals a subtle change in style at the colossus of the major oil companies. More than any of their predecessors, Exxon's incoming management team are men who won their spurs not so much as oilmen as organization men.

Ken Jamieson's successor as chair man and chief executive officer will be Exxon's current president, Clifton Garvin, 53, a forceful if taciturn Virginia-born engineer who rose through the corporate ranks via the company's burgeoning chemical operations. The new president: Howard C. Kauffmann, 52, a senior vice president (one of five), who has been running Exxon's operations in Europe and Latin America for most of the past ten years. One Exxon executive, who knows them both, describes them as "cast in the same mold--hard businessmen, not extraverted, used to tough decisions." More than at most giant corporations, however, the lines of power at Exxon tend to lead directly to the chairman's office, and there Garvin should feel at ease. Says one of his subordinates: "He fastens those blue eyes on you in a way that there's no question who's boss."

Garvin's corporate background is in transport, refining and marketing as well as chemicals--areas of the business that are increasingly important to Exxon now that governments in the Middle East and Latin America are squeezing the profits out of petroleum production. Garvin was marked as a comer at Exxon in the early 1960s. In 1965 he took over the company's chemical operations and helped turn them into the fastest-growing part of Exxon's business.

Hard Time. Elevated to Exxon's presidency in 1972, Garvin worked closely with Jamieson, who entrusted him with the negotiations for Saudi Arabia's still-pending takeover of Aramco, the four-company consortium of which Exxon is a major partner. As chairman, Garvin will have a hard time matching 1974's huge profits gains.

Bucked up by the fourfold increase in oil prices since the 1973 embargo, Exxon's total revenues rose by 61% last year to $45.8 billion, pushing the company for the first time ahead of General Motors, to top place on the FORTUNE 500 list in terms of sales. After-tax earnings also increased by 29% to $3.1 billion--the largest net profit ever reported by any industrial company. But Exxon's net in the first quarter of 1975 slipped 11% below the same period a year earlier, when oil prices were still rising; some Wall Street analysts expect company profits to soften even more.

With profits under pressure throughout the industry, Exxon will be expected to help argue the oil companies' case that the Federal Trade Commission's campaign to break up the major companies Imperils the stepped-up investment in new sources of energy that the Administration wants to encourage.

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