Chair of the board of directors, Svein Rennemo (Photo: Trond Isaksen)
In an article in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten on 18 September, chair of the board of directors, Svein Rennemo, writes that the company will discuss various alternatives in this process.
The board is responsible for presenting a proposal for a name and logo to the company's owners, who will decide on the proposal at the annual general meeting in 2009.
The proposal for a new name will symbolise the company's business strategy, value base and vision. In this connection we will not exclude using the Statoil name, but the task assigned to the board is to find a new name.
Irrespective of the name recommended by the board to the annual general meeting, the board finds it appropriate to keep Statoil as the name of the company's petrol station activity.
Considerable values are tied to the company's name and position in this field, and based on the board's evaluation the company is best served by further developing this brand. The fact that 90% of the costs of any re-branding are related to this part of the company further supports the decision to keep the current well-known name also in the future
StatoilHydro has hired Det Norske Veritas (DNV) to look at all parts of the company and calculate the costs of the various alternatives.
The costs of re-branding the company's petrol station activity have been estimated by DNV at a gross amount of around NOK 1.9 billion. These costs can be excluded since this part of the company's activity keeps the Statoil name.
The costs of the remaining re-branding activities have been estimated to be in the size of NOK 150-200 million. Parts of these costs are unavoidable, since one common visual brand must be implemented on old Statoil and Hydro installations as well as parts currently carrying the StatoilHydro brand. Marketing costs are additional, but this activity must be carried out by the company in any case.