Standard Oil an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act, Section II. It ordered Standard to break up into 34 independent companies with different boards of directors, the biggest two of the companies were Standard Oil of New Jersey (which became Exxon) and Standard Oil of New York (which became Mobil). Standard's president, John D. Rockefeller, had long since retired from any management role. But, as he owned a quarter of the shares of the resultant companies, and those share values mostly doubled, he emerged from the dissolution as the richest man in the world. The dissolution had actually propelled Rockefeller's personal
Standard Oil Co. v. United States (Standard Stations) of extensive scholarly commentary. Defendant Standard Stations, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of defendant Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) (now named Chevron Corporation), managed gasoline filling stations that Socal owned and leased to independent businessmen. It also supplied gasoline to locally owned and operated filling stations that used the Standard Stations brand name The "Standard Stations" case involved the distribution of petroleum products and automobile accessories. The US oil industry had relatively few producers, each having substantial shares of the market. They were integrated with their retail outlets by requirements contracts. These contracts bound the retail outlets to obtain