Exxon Mobil president counts every penny of his $31.4 billion each night

Posted Mar 26th 2009 12:40PM by Connie Madon
Filed under: International Markets, Good news, Management, Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron Corp (CVX), ConocoPhillips (COP), Oil

While the whole world is scrambling for money, Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE: XOM) is trying to figure out what to do with $31.4 billion every day.

Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson told his treasurer to count every penny before he goes to bed each night. That's how careful Exxon Mobil is of losing capital in this time of financial chaos.

Exxon Mobil is very secretive about where the money is invested, but executives do say that some of it is used for funding capital budgets -- about $1 billion a week. The rest could be used for acquisitions.

What is not often known is that Exxon Mobil pumps more oil than all of OPEC, except Saudi Arabia and Iran. What does Exxon Mobil plan to do with its money pile? Analysts speculate that it will buy stakes in African, Iraqi or Brazilian fields. Mr. Tillerson said that he is not interested in purchasing rivals because assets remain overpriced. Instead, Exxon Mobil bought back $32 billion of its own shares and held 3 billion shares at the end of December.

With such a huge pile of shares, Exxon Mobil could easily buy its two biggest rivals -- Chevron Corp (NYSE: CVX) and Conoco Phillips (NYSE: COP) without borrowing money, issuing stock, or tapping its cash.

Would you buy Exxon Mobil stock?

Tags: cop, cvx, Rex Tillerson, RexTillerson, xom

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-26-2009 @ 1:25PM

Bernie said...

No, I wouldn't buy Exxon and for reasons other then the fact that they're the epitome of corporate greed. It's simply that we've finally started real steps to move away from oil and I don't think this will be able to be stalled out like the original push for electric cars in the late 90s.

3-26-2009 @ 3:58PM

christian said...

Dream on Bernie! I suspect you do not realise the power that OPEC and particularly Saudi Arabia has over global energy. Saudi Arabia can produce oil at less than $2.00, yes two dollars. If the Saudis were to say "Dear America and the rest of the Industrial World we will sell you oil at $8.00 to $10.00", almost all crude oil production and exploraition worldwide will stop. Certainly solar power, wind mills ocean tides generators will become uneconomical. If $8.00 is too high they can lower it to $5.00. Contrary to what you are being told by people who have nevet and will never produce a drop of oil, the Saudis can survive for some time without todays huge revenue, because their societies can adapt much easier than we can. When Libya nationalised and essentially confiscated British Petroleums holdings in Libya and BP then arrested Tankers carrying BP crude to foreign porrts, Qaddafy said to them " OK, but remember my primitive society has lived without the revenu from oil for two thousand years, it can easily without it for another twenty but you can not". So Bernie and others of the same view please think before you speak. Nuclear Fusion (not nuclear fission,the present method) is our real energy indipendence. I'll let you find out why in the hope that my views have piqued your interest in the issues. Good Luck

3-26-2009 @ 10:06PM

fredonly said...

Bernie - if you think Exxon-Mobil epitomizes corporate greed, you have a distorted view of what corporate greed is. Exxon-Mobil is in fact the epitome of applying a consistent, conservative business model. Compare that to the greed of the various financial institutions which created reckless, shady vehicles to stoke their greed. And then, of course, taxpayers are forced to save their greedy asses when their plans went up in smoke. There's no comparison. You are blinded by the fact that Exxon-Mobil is a large company, spending lots of money, receiving lots of revenue and an honest profit of roughly 10% of revenue.