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. of New Jersey v. United States significant constraint on competition by mere virtue of their size and market power, as implied by the Antitrust Act. Over a period of decades, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had bought up virtually all of the oil refining companies in the United States. Initially, the growth of Standard Oil was driven by superior refining technology and consistency in the kerosene products (i.e., product standardization) that were the main use of oil in the early decades of the company's existence. The management of Standard Oil then reinvested their profits in the acquisition of most of the refining capacity in