Lee R. Raymond is an American businessman and the chief executive officer and chairman of ExxonMobil from 1999 to 2005. He had previously been the CEO of Exxon since 1993. He joined the company in 1963 and has been president since 1987 and a director since 1984.
Raymond began working for Exxon in 1963. Raymond became a director of Exxon in 1984 and in 1987 he became the President of the company. In 1993, he became CEO succeeding Lawrence G. Rawl and held this post until 2005. He negotiated the merger with Mobil that became effective in 1999 and gave birth to the new ExxonMobil company. In 2003, when approaching the age of 65, the mandatory retirement age for executives at ExxonMobil, the board of directors requested him to stay in his position two more years, in order to prepare his succession, after the post-merger reorganisation period. On August 14, 2005, Raymond announced that he would retire at the end of 2005 as ExxonMobil's Chairman and CEO, two years later than the usual mandatory retirement age of 65 for the company executives. ExxonMobil president Rex W. Tillerson succeeded Raymond on 1 January 2006. On April 14, 2006, it was reported that Raymond's retirement package was worth about $400 million, the largest in history for a U.S. public company. However, the majority of that sum consisted of retirement-independent salary, bonuses, stock options, and restricted stock awards from his final year and prior years that, while high, are not unprecedented among major American CEOs. Retirement-specific payments in accordance with the standard pension plan provided to all ExxonMobil employees totaled around $100 million, calculated based on his over forty years of service and his salary upon retirement. Raymond was also chair of the National Petroleum Council, when it was asked to produce a report on the future of oil supply and demand. Raymond was one of the most outspoken executives in the United States against regulation to curtail global warming.
Legacy
describes Raymond as "notoriously skeptical about climate change and disliked government interference at any level". Lee Raymond was at the helm of Exxon while it remained one of the last large companies to omit gay employees in its anti-discrimination policy. He was also at the helm during the takeover of Mobil, when the new Exxon-Mobil corporation rescinded Mobil's pre-existing anti-discrimination policy. HR policy was eventually updated in 2015 to include a prohibition on discrimination against gay employees, but from 1999-2014 the board annually rejected a resolution brought by shareholders to compel the company to implement a non-discrimination policy. His son, John T. Raymond, is active in the oil and gas industry. John partnered with the Jim Flores and Paul Allen-backed Vulcan Capital in the buyout of Plains Resources. Lee Raymond received the Woodrow Wilson Award from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution for Corporate Citizenship during a dinner held in his honor in Dallas, Texas in early 2003.
