Henri Wilhelm August Deterding, KBE (19 April 1866 – 4 February 1939) was one of the first executives of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and was its general manager for 36 years, from 1900 to 1936, and was also chairman of the combined Royal Dutch/Shell oil company. He succeeded the founder of Royal Dutch, Jean Baptiste August Kessler, when he died, and made Royal Dutch Shell a competitor to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and one of the world's largest petroleum companies.
In 1920, Deterding was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to Anglo-Dutch relations and for his work in supplying the Allies with petroleum during the First World War. Deterding was a bitter enemy of the Soviet Union and helped thousands of White Russian exiles.[1]