BP has announced that CEO Bernard Looney has notified the Company that he has resigned as Chief Executive Officer with immediate effect.
Why you may ask? It seems that he has had some personal relationships with colleagues in the past, not all of which he had disclosed to the company. No breach of the Company’s Code of Conduct was found after an investigation but more allegations have been received.
As an investor in BP, could I care whether Looney had some personal relationships? I do not. I am only concerned whether he has been doing a good job or not. So far as I can tell he has been. BP needs to manage a transition from being a big producer of oil and gas to a more mixed and lower carbon energy provider. This it seemed to have sensible plans to do.
This looks like a political witch-hunt of some kind. It’s not the first time that BP has lost its CEO due to inappropriate relationships. See the case of John Browne (now Lord Browne) in 2007 and his homosexual relationships. See Wikipedia for details.
The Telegraph had some amusing comments on the latest news. It said: “Mr Looney’s personal life was thrown into the spotlight last year when his ex-wife Jacqueline Hurst, a life coach, wrote about her marriage difficulties in her self-published book, How To Do You: the Life Changing Art of Mastering Your Thoughts and Taking Control of Your Life. In a chapter on anxiety which is understood to reference her marriage to Mr Looney, Ms Hurst claimed that her husband only married her to get ahead at BP. Ms Hurst, who has been married twice, wrote: When my husband ended our marriage suddenly and without warning via a WhatsApp message, I was naturally devastated.”
It seems life at the top of this FTSE-100 company is like any good soap opera.
Roger Lawson (Twitter https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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