Why has BP removed its chairman?

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Well, BP has removed its chairman, Albert Manifold, who'd only been in the job for a matter of months because of complaints from inside the company about his aggressive management style and the executive approach, his hands-on approach to dealing with matters at a big company, which are usually the preserve of the top executives. Now, Mr. Manifold had a long and distinguished business career before joining BP and he was parachuted in to the job in order to help transform BP's fortunes at an incredibly challenging time for the company. And this announcement today that Mr. Manifold has been asked to step down by his board colleagues only serves to renew the uncertainty surrounding the fate of one of Britain's most important companies. It's very unusual for a chairman in particular to be removed by the board of a blue-chip British company in this way. BP itself has seen its more than its fair share of big boardroom changes, enforced boardroom changes in recent years.

[00:01:06]Bernard Looney, a former chief executive, was sacked in the autumn of 2023 because of allegations about his conduct towards colleagues.

[00:01:17]Then last year the successor as chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, was also removed as the CEO, but this time it was due to concerns about his performance and the direction of travel for BP, which has been facing searching questions about its future and about whether it might even be vulnerable to a takeover bid from its great rival, Shell. But for the chairman to have to step down in this way is incredibly unusual for him to have apparently made misjudgments about his style and his behavior towards colleagues is not quite unprecedented, but it's very, very rare in the upper echelons of Britain's biggest companies. Albert Manifold came to BP with a long and distinguished career in business behind him. He'd had a more than two decades at the Irish building materials company CRH where he was lauded for his turnaround of that business and frankly shareholders in BP were looking forward to more of the same. He wasn't a member of the corporate establishment. He hadn't been touted widely for the job before he was appointed by BP. But in the months after his arrival at the oil company, he was already being applauded by investors for delivering some of the things that they've been calling for for some time.

[00:02:35]So that's another reason why his departure today is seen as a blow by investors in BP. Well, at the moment we don't have very many details about exactly why Albert Manifold has left the company other than what BP said in its announcement to the stock exchange at lunchtime on Tuesday which were that he had been removed because of serious concerns about governance and conduct. Now, what I've picked up from my sources close to the company is that Mr. Manifold's style was aggressive, that he was belittling colleagues at a senior level during his time in the office at BP headquarters and that there were various other examples of a style and approach which was frankly volcanic.

[00:03:23]Is one of the words that was used to describe Mr. Manifold's behavior to me.

[00:03:27]So clearly there were far-reaching concerns that made the BP board feel compelled to act in this way today. Well, I think one of the interesting things about what this incident today, this episode today demonstrates is that Mr. Manifold's departure by by definition as I say for a chairman of a blue-chip company to be forced out in this way is incredibly unusual, but it does highlight, I think, the extent to which workplace culture has shifted in every area of British business and that behaviors once deemed to be the norm and acceptable are now seem to be anything but and that extends right to the top of British boardrooms.

[00:04:09]The reaction of BP shareholders today was an unhappy one. The shares in the company were down at one point as by as much as 6% and bear in mind that BP has a market valuation of well over 80 billion pounds. So, shareholders have taken fright this news for a couple of reasons. First of all, the boardroom instability at BP is nothing new. We've seen it several times over the last decade that BP just has a difficulty keeping a grip on its board in the way that most blue chip companies of its size would be expected to do and the second reason is that this will raise questions again about whether BP's strategy, even if investors regard it as the right one, can actually be delivered. Over the last decade or so, BP has performed a series of strategic U-turns, initially shifting towards investment in renewables and in the energy transition and in more recent times agreeing that it should shift back to appease investors.

[00:05:09]Now, Mr. Manifold did bring in a new chief executive, Meg O'Neill, the first woman ever to run BP. She is regarded as an exceptionally safe pair of hands and she has already stressed that she wants to maximize BP's historic and traditional strengths. The question is whether Mr. Manifold's successor will agree with her.