\n<\/p>\n
BP has removed its chair, Albert Manifold, with the oil company\u2019s board saying it had serious concerns about \u201cimportant governance standards, oversight and conduct\u201d.<\/p>\n
The FTSE 100 company announced Manifold\u2019s departure with immediate effect on Tuesday, without giving further details. He had lasted only eight months in the role.<\/p>\n
BP\u2019s share price slumped briefly by 9% in the minutes after the announcement just before lunchtime in London before closing down 4%.<\/p>\n
Amanda Blanc, the senior independent director at BP and chief executive of the insurance company Aviva, said: \u201cAlbert has helped bring a welcome focus and pace to BP\u2019s transformation. However, the board has been surprised and disappointed to learn of governance oversight and conduct issues it deems unacceptable and has taken decisive action.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manifold\u2019s conduct was considered too aggressive by other directors, and he was also seen as trying to exert control in the manner of an executive rather than of a chair, according to reports. The FT reported that senior colleagues felt belittled by Manifold, and that the newly installed chief executive, Meg O\u2019Neill, had bristled at some of his interventions. BP and Manifold were approached for comment.<\/p>\n
Manifold was appointed as BP\u2019s chair in October 2025, after serving as chief executive of the Irish building materials company CRH, and was tasked with continuing a change in the oil company\u2019s strategy, to refocus on fossil fuel extraction, and ditch renewable energy investments.<\/p>\n
He rapidly ousted BP\u2019s chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, after less than two years in the role, and hired O\u2019Neill to take over in December.<\/p>\n
Manifold is the second senior leader at BP to lose his job for conduct reasons within three years. Auchincloss\u2019s predecessor, Bernard Looney, was forced out in September 2023 for failing to disclose sexual relationships with colleagues when he was made chief executive.<\/p>\n
Looney had created a gas and low-carbon energy division. However, O\u2019Neill, an American who joined from Australia\u2019s Woodside Petroleum, in April reversed that move, shifting back to an upstream oil and gas production unit and a downstream business focused on refining and distributing fuels and retail activities.<\/p>\n
Maurizio Carulli, global energy analyst at Quilter Cheviot, a wealth manager, said: \u201cWhilst the news is obviously a short-term negative, it is important to remember that BP has made significant operational improvements and strategic refocusing over the past year, and this is the result of the successful efforts of the entire organisation and its management, not just of one person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even in his short time in the job, Manifold had riled some investors. 18% of the votes at his first annual meeting in charge of the board went against his re-election, after he blocked a resolution by Follow This, a shareholder group focused on the environment. Follow This had asked the company to report on how it would protect shareholder value if demand for oil and gas falls.<\/p>\n
Mark van Baal, director of Follow This, said BP still needed to reform its governance structures, despite Manifold\u2019s removal. \u201cThe new chair must bring real expertise in governance, climate risk and transition risk, otherwise nothing changes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
BP will now start a search for its third chair in two years, after Helge Lund was ousted in 2025 in reaction to investor pressure, including from the US hedge fund Elliott Advisors. BP has appointed Ian Tyler, a board member, as interim chair with immediate effect. Tyler is a former chief executive of the FTSE 250 infrastructure group Balfour Beatty. He is also chair of Grafton Group, a FTSE 250 building supplies company, and a director at the FTSE 100 mining company Anglo American.<\/p>\n
Tyler gave O\u2019Neill strong backing in a statement published on Tuesday. He said BP\u2019s board had been \u201cvery impressed\u201d and that she had \u201creal clarity about the direction and opportunity for the business\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BP has removed its chair, Albert Manifold, with the oil company\u2019s board saying it had serious concerns about \u201cimportant governance standards, oversight and conduct\u201d. The FTSE 100 company announced Manifold\u2019s departure with immediate effect on Tuesday, without giving further details. He had lasted only eight months in the role. BP\u2019s share price slumped briefly by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[6640,2431,2974,3436,4480,24611,3096],"class_list":{"0":"post-49777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-albert","9":"tag-chair","10":"tag-concerns","11":"tag-conduct","12":"tag-governance","13":"tag-manifold","14":"tag-removes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}