Modest CEO who "healed" oil major Shell

By Tom Bergin

LONDON (Reuters) - Jeroen van der Veer rebuilt Royal Dutch Shell Plc's confidence after a reserves overbooking scandal but his conservative Calvinist roots meant he never took too much credit for it.

Van der Veer, 61, steps down as chief executive on June 30, after announcing his retirement last year, to be replaced by Shell's Chief Financial Officer, Peter Voser.

Van der Veer took the top job at Shell -- then a partnership of separate Dutch and British entities -- in 2004 after the company admitted massively overstating its oil and gas reserves - the key metric on which oil companies are valued.

The reserves scandal led to the departure of the group's boss, Phil Watts, and other top executives and caused the group's shares to dive.

The low-key Dutchman was seen as a safe pair of hands after the brash and aggressive Watts, whose penchant for deliberately hard-to-achieve stretch targets was partly blamed for the reserves scandal, and the next big scandal to rock the company -- delays and cost overruns on big projects.

"This was a fairly wounded company at the time," Shell board member Peter Job said. "The reserves issue had come as a great shock to staff. Jeroen came forward as the person who healed injured feelings."

Van der Veer led the unification of the UK and Dutch companies, helping to streamline the group's notoriously slow decision-making structures. He also took a hands-on role in overseeing the company's biggest projects.

Despite lacking a background in exploration, the former chemicals division boss put building the upstream portfolio at the forefront of his strategy.

If van der Veer was a contrast to his predecessor, he was an even greater one to the dominant figure in Europe's oil industry at the time, John Browne, the CEO of rival BP Plc.

While Browne wore fine tailored suits and was always impeccably coiffed, van der Veer's suits hung uneasily on his tall frame and were often decorated with Shell-issue ties bearing the company's Scallop-shell logo.

MODEST

Van der Veer also differed from Browne in shunning a high media profile. Even when the Shell boss became more comfortable in front of reporters, he maintained a modest approach.

When asked to reminisce, earlier this year, on his success in turning around Shell, the CEO said:

"I come from a Calvinistic country ... One of the values we have is, you simply work and you try to do good but you can't say about yourself or your company that you are pleased about it," he added.

While analysts and investors generally speak well of his tenure, most note that in the oil industry, the decade or more long germination period for big projects means a CEO's success or failure is often felt after they stand down.