Guus Kessler

Jean Baptiste August "Guus" Kessler Jr. (also JBA Kessler) (born June 16, 1888 in The Hague , † November 5, 1972 ibid) was a Dutch industrialist, manager and tennis player .

Life and activity

Kessler was the second of six children of the manager Jean Baptiste August Kessler senior , the first director of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Petroleum Maatschappij (Royal Dutch Petroleum Company), today's Royal Dutch Shell Corporation.

In his youth, Kessler was a successful tennis player. In 1906 he took part in the Olympic Intermediate Games in Athens . There he only played in the individual competition . Curiously, he got three byes at the beginning of the tournament, so that he moved into the semi-finals without a fight. There he got the "glasses" and lost against the eventual Olympic champion Max Décugis 0: 6, 0: 6. Due to a special rule, however, he was not awarded the bronze medal as a defeated semi-finalist. Further tennis results are not known.

Kessler studied engineering at the University of Delft and then took on managerial roles at the Royal Dutch Shell Corporation, which was headed by Henri Deterding after the early death of his father , under whom they initially worked and with whom he and his brother Dolf Kessler did not get along well. Dolf later left the company and founded Koninklijke Hoogovens , a steel company.

In 1923, Kessler achieved the rank of director. Until his retirement in 1936, he was considered the right-hand man of the Shell company boss Deterding. Among other things, Kessler emerged through his efforts in the early 1930s to combine the most important companies in the petroleum-producing industry in a single trust - which, however, failed because of the emergence of coal-based synthetic gasoline. In the course of time he also became a director in numerous sub-companies of the Shell Group (Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., Bataafsche Petroleum Mij., Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Co., Shell Petroleum Co.).

From 1947 to 1949, Kessler finally held the position of General Manager of Shell. In 1949 he retired, but continued (until 1961) as the company's president commissioner .

family

Kessler had been married to Anna Francoise "Ans" Kessler-Soop (1889-1983) since July 11, 1911, with whom he had five daughters and one son.

In his second marriage in 1948 he married Thalia "Lia" de Kempenaer (1917-2000).

literature

• Who's who in Commerce and Industry. Volume 10, 1957, p. 616.