To my knowledge, being the son of one of it's top managers at that time, the name at the merge was not TotalFina (notice the capitals), but TotalFinaElf. It came along after a long, dirty and painful struggle of take over bids initiated by Albert Frère which ended in a complete divide of the management about the merger with Total, where the younger management under the leadership of Mr. François Cornellis (President of Petrofina at that time, 1998)and his gang won this battle in favor of this merger. It would be great if someone could investigate how in effect this company was sold out in Europe, and it's corpse disceted and sold to different state and private owned companies througout the world.
