THE BIGGEST BOSSES 17. GEORGE KELLER CHEVRON STILL SMILING OVER GULF
(FORTUNE Magazine) – During World War II, George Keller was an Air Force meteorologist assigned to Labrador. Predicting weather on the North Atlantic was a tricky job under any circumstances, but the pressure wasn't just barometric. The wives of the top brass at the base liked to throw picnics and would call Keller to ask if it was going to rain. ''I wanted to duck when they called,'' he says with a laugh. ''There are few things worse than a general's wife getting wet.'' Keller, a large, affable man, is chairman of Chevron Corp. in San Francisco, and his job calls for even more perilous guesswork -- predicting the price of oil. Last year crude prices dropped faster than hailstones over the Bay of Fundy, cutting Chevron's revenues and profits in half, to $24.3 billion and $715 million, respectively. That makes it all the more difficult to pay off Chevron's $13.3-billion acquisition of Gulf Oil three years ago -- the biggest buyout in history -- but Keller professes no regrets. ''It was overwhelmingly the best thing we ever did,'' he says. ''It more than doubled our reserves.'' Keller deftly sold off Gulf's Canadian operations and 520 gas stations in the East. The proceeds helped cut Chevron's debt from a dizzying 55% of capitalization right after the purchase to 35% at the end of last year. Keller, 63, had hoped to get the debt down to 30% by the time he retires next year, but now expects to hit a respectable 33%. First in his class at Fenwick High School in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Keller won a scholarship to study chemical engineering at MIT. When he graduated after the war, his wife wanted to live in San Francisco and didn't discourage him from turning down better-paying offers (from Procter & Gamble, Esso, and Du Pont) to work at Chevron. As a chemical engineer, he spent 15 years supervising dozens of small construction projects at refineries, chemical plants, and gas-processing facilities. ''It was the perfect spot,'' he says. ''It wasn't just engineering. It was one of the very few fields where there are both technical problems and business problems.'' Lots of overtime also helped his career. Vice President James Sullivan remembers being on an elevator late at night 14 years ago when Keller got aboard. ''His hair was frazzled, his tie was loose, and it looked as if he'd dumped his entire in-box into his briefcase.'' Keller says he learned to relish foreign cultures while building a refinery in Japan in the early Sixties. After that he often would arrive the day before a meeting in a foreign country, to sample the food, entertainment, and lifestyles. In 1967 he became an assistant vice president for foreign operations. Seven years later he was promoted to vice chairman, and he was named chairman and CEO in 1981. He relaxes by playing dominoes, a game especially popular among San Francisco executives. At the start of a long ride on the company jet recently, two senior executives tried to steer Keller into a complicated discussion before he could settle into his game. ''I don't think we want to talk about that now,'' he told them. When he retires, Keller wants to travel. As chairman, he no longer has the luxury of arriving early for foreign meetings and wandering around. ''I can spend four days in Egypt and never see the Pyramids,'' he complains. ''It would be great to go back to all those places and tour them with the people I've met.'' |
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