...Two decades ago, Neva Goodwin Rockefeller grew so tired of all the baggage that came with her fabled family name that she changed it and became plain Neva Goodwin.
But now, Ms. Goodwin, 63 years old, is embracing the powerful Rockefeller name as she publicly challenges the management of Exxon Mobil Corp., successor to the oil company founded by her great-grandfather, John D. Rockefeller. As Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, she has marshaled four generations of Rockefellers to join her in a campaign to force major changes at one of the most profitable companies in the world. The battle will come to a head at Exxon's annual meeting Wednesday in Dallas.
Some members of the family joined the fight out of a passionate belief in the threat of global warming; others were concerned that Exxon is overlooking business opportunities or risks. Many seem offended that the company appears impervious to the wishes of its shareholders, including those named Rockefeller.
...Fifteen family members, mostly cousins from Ms. Goodwin's fourth generation, have stepped forward to co-sponsor four shareholder resolutions urging change at Exxon. While three address concerns about global warming and renewable energy, the Rockefellers have rallied most enthusiastically around a fourth proposal to name an independent chairman, a plan they say is supported by 73 direct descendents of John D.
An independent chairman, they argue, could chart a strategy for Exxon's future, one that many of them hope would include more focus on renewable energy. They also believe an independent chairman -- to whom the CEO would be accountable -- might be more responsive to shareholder concerns.
...The odds are long that the family will get its way. As stockholders with only a tiny holding relative to Exxon's 5.3 billion voting shares, the Rockefellers' main clout comes from wielding their name to gain attention and woo other shareholders. The fact that Exxon just finished the most profitable year in American corporate history doesn't help their cause. Last year, Exxon posted a profit of $40.61 billion. The company's shares have more than doubled in the past four years.
Of course, anybody sane might argue the time to prepare for an inevitable sea-change forecast accurately by the oil depletion curve is when you've got the most resources to spend doing it.
Anybody sane might argue that since all "fossil" fuels derive from the energy of the sun, it would be wise to take advantage of modern molecular genetics and chemical engineering to devise a way of producing massive amounts of hydrocarbon from prokaryotic action on C02 utilizing the photosynthetic genes of algae to drive the process.
It seems sanity is not requisite for being the CEO of Exxon, only the ability to exploit people or resources and make a quick buck.
Back to the story:
...Peter M. O'Neill, 45, the son of one of Ms. Goodwin's cousins, is doing something that is usually anathema in the family: acting as a spokesman and giving interviews to the press.
It's an unprecedented effort by the politically diverse clan, says family historian Peter J. Johnson, who has worked for the Rockefellers for 32 years. "To actually get consensus in the family is rare," he says.
Exxon executives at first belittled the Rockfellers' potential influence by pointing out to reporters that the family members sponsoring the proposals own only .006% of the company's shares.
Family members say they own much more, but won't say how much. They say most of the family investments sit in a thicket of trusts set up starting in 1934 and mostly managed by a unit of J.P. Morgan Chase. Some say they don't even tell other family members how much they own.
On May 12, Exxon sent a letter to shareholders urging them to reject the proposal for an independent chairman, arguing "no one governance model fits all companies."
The Rockefellers are mounting the most serious shareholder revolt against Exxon in recent memory. But they're going up against a company with unrivaled success at finding, extracting and refining fossil fuels. Exxon has managed to make billions of dollars a year whether oil prices were high or low under men who spent their whole careers tending its fields and refineries. That strong culture strikes some outsiders, including the Rockefellers, as insular.
The Rockefellers' ties to Exxon go back to the 1870s, when John Davison Rockefeller Sr. began to put together the cartel that became Standard Oil. Trustbusters later split it into 34 companies, including what became Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips. Two of the largest, Exxon and Mobil, merged in 1999.
A century ago, Mr. Rockefeller was reviled as a rapacious plutocrat. Eventually he and his son, John Junior, developed a reputation for philanthropy on a grand scale. The family was responsible for, among many other things, restoring Colonial Williamsburg and creating Grand Teton National Park.
John D.'s five Rockefeller grandsons were towering figures of the mid-20th Century. Most famous was Nelson, four-term governor of New York and later vice president under Gerald R. Ford. The only survivor of that group is Neva's father, David, who issued a statement offering his support to the family's campaign.
Younger members of the now 232-person clan have generally avoided the spotlight. They live all over the world, but gather twice a year, often at Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, up the Hudson River from New York City.
To some Rockefeller watchers, the newfound activism appears to be another outbreak of the unease about their oil-based fortune that periodically grips family members. Those who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s were particularly ambivalent, says Peter Collier, a California writer who has chronicled the Rockefeller, Roosevelt and Ford families.
"For them, Exxon is not only an environmental malefactor, it's also original sin," he said in an interview. By challenging Exxon, "They are trying to remove the stain of oil from the family name."
That's a little melodramatic for many of the Rockefellers, including Ms. Goodwin, who in the 1970s was a friend and colleague of the unconventional inventor and professional visionary Buckminster Fuller. She lives with her historian husband in a baby-blue clapboard house, where a collection of Far Side cartoons sits on a bookshelf near volumes of Charles Darwin's correspondence. A Prius is parked in the garage.
"I don't feel responsible for everything my family has ever done," she says. "Selectively, I look at the really fine things the family has done and am extremely proud."
As co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, Ms. Goodwin's interest in corporate power was mostly academic. But a couple of years ago at Tufts, she met Sister Patricia A. Daly, a shareholder activist, and decided to co-sponsor her resolution, at Exxon's 2003 annual meeting, asking the company to study the impact of climate change.
...Ms. Goodwin then turned to her two-dozen Rockefeller first cousins for support. Five signed an email that read, in part, "Most members of our family will own shares of Exxon for far longer than the present management will be in place, and therefore we have an important interest in and responsibility toward the long-term viability of the company."
The resolution failed, but it ignited interest among the family, which formed a committee to study the issue. Some on the committee were ardent environmentalists; others had a pragmatic business outlook.
Among the latter was Mr. O'Neill, a former social worker who once ran a mental health clinic in Harlem and now sits on the boards of several private companies and philanthropies. A man who speaks carefully and uses "dialogue" as a verb, he says he worries that Exxon isn't positioning itself for a sea change in the energy markets.
"I care about the bottom line," he says, noting that for him, as for most in the family, Exxon is the largest single investment...
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