A2 · Elementary
7 min
corporate governanceenergybusiness
Nobody Lasts Long at the Top of BP
La silla más incómoda de Londres
BP chairman Albert Manifold was removed with immediate effect over serious conduct concerns, with no further public explanation. Fletcher and Octavio dig into what this means for a company with a long and complicated history.
El presidente de BP, Albert Manifold, fue destituido de su cargo con efecto inmediato por razones de conducta graves, sin más explicación pública. Fletcher y Octavio analizan qué significa esto para una empresa con una historia larga y complicada.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| despedir | to fire (from a job); to say goodbye | La empresa despide a muchos trabajadores. |
| el jefe | the boss / the chief | El jefe trabaja en la oficina. |
| el precio | the price | El precio del petróleo baja hoy. |
| los inversores | the investors | Los inversores miran los resultados de la empresa. |
| la deuda | the debt | La empresa tiene muchas deudas. |
The phrase 'with immediate effect' only shows up in announcements when something has gone badly wrong.
And this week, BP used it about their own chairman.
Sí.
Yes.
Albert Manifold no trabaja en BP.
Albert Manifold no longer works at BP.
Es la noticia del día.
It's the news of the day.
Removed with immediate effect.
Over, quote, 'serious conduct concerns.' And that's all they gave us.
No details, no context, nothing.
BP dice poco.
BP says little.
Pero 'con efecto inmediato' es muy serio.
But 'with immediate effect' is very serious.
Right.
In corporate language, that phrase is the equivalent of security escorting you out with your things in a box.
Manifold had been chairman since 2023.
Three years in, and then gone, just like that.
Antes, Manifold era el jefe de CRH.
Before this, Manifold was the head of CRH.
Una empresa irlandesa muy grande.
A very large Irish company.
CRH, yeah.
Building materials, one of the biggest in the world.
So this was not a lightweight appointment.
BP went out and got someone with serious operational credentials.
Pero ahora BP tiene un problema.
But now BP has a problem.
No hay presidente.
There is no chairman.
¿Quién manda?
Who's in charge?
That's the immediate practical headache.
Because the chairman and the CEO are supposed to be separate roles, and the company is already navigating a pretty rough stretch strategically.
Murray Auchincloss es el director ejecutivo ahora.
Murray Auchincloss is the current CEO.
Él tiene muchos problemas.
He has many problems.
He does.
And here's the thing I keep coming back to: this is not the first time BP has had a very public, very damaging implosion at the leadership level.
This company has a pattern.
Sí, BP tiene una historia muy difícil.
Yes, BP has a very difficult history.
Muchos problemas, muchos jefes.
Many problems, many chiefs.
Lord Browne.
John Browne, the CEO who transformed BP into a modern energy giant in the nineties and early two thousands, and then resigned abruptly in 2007 over a personal scandal.
That was the first big one I remember covering.
Y después, en 2010, el accidente de Deepwater Horizon.
And then, in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon accident.
Un desastre enorme.
An enormous disaster.
Eleven people killed, the worst offshore oil spill in American history.
Nearly five million barrels of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
And BP's CEO at the time, Tony Hayward, became infamous for saying he wanted his life back.
While the coast was still covered in oil.
Qué frase tan horrible.
What a terrible thing to say.
La gente estaba muy, muy enfadada.
People were very, very angry.
Hayward was out by the end of that year.
BP paid more than sixty billion dollars in fines and settlements over the following decade.
Sixty billion.
The company nearly didn't survive it.
BP es muy grande, pero los problemas también son muy grandes.
BP is very large, but the problems are also very large.
Scale cuts both ways.
The size that lets you absorb a sixty-billion-dollar hit is the same size that generates the kind of complexity where things go wrong in the first place.
Y después de Deepwater, BP habla mucho de energía limpia.
And after Deepwater, BP talks a lot about clean energy.
Bernard Looney.
He came in as CEO in 2020 with this very big, very ambitious net-zero pledge.
BP was going to reinvent itself as an energy company, not just an oil company.
And then Looney resigned in 2023 over, of all things, his disclosures about personal relationships with colleagues.
Otro escándalo personal.
Another personal scandal.
Es increíble.
It's incredible.
Three CEOs out under a cloud in under twenty years, and now a chairman removed with immediate effect.
There is something structurally strange about this company's governance.
¿Por qué BP tiene tantos problemas con sus jefes?
Why does BP have so many problems with its bosses?
Es una pregunta importante.
It's an important question.
My instinct, and I spent enough time covering oil majors to have developed one, is that the culture inside these companies creates people who believe they are genuinely above ordinary accountability.
Power does that.
Especially when the power comes with a private jet and a salary north of ten million a year.
Sí.
Yes.
Y los inversores quieren resultados, no escándalos.
And investors want results, not scandals.
Which brings us to where BP actually is right now, strategically.
Because this couldn't come at a worse time.
BP tiene deudas.
BP has debts.
Y el petróleo es más barato ahora.
And oil is cheaper now.
Auchincloss, the current CEO, already reversed a lot of Looney's green commitments.
BP walked back its oil production reduction targets in early 2024, which sent a pretty clear signal that the energy transition strategy was more marketing than substance.
And investors actually liked that reversal, at least initially.
Pero el precio del petróleo baja.
But the oil price falls.
Eso es un problema real para BP.
That is a real problem for BP.
OPEC has been increasing supply, global demand growth is softer than expected, and BP's share price is down substantially from where it was a couple of years ago.
The company has been under real pressure from activist investors, including Elliott Management, which took a significant stake earlier this year and started pushing hard for a breakup or a strategic overhaul.
Elliott Management quiere cambios grandes.
Elliott Management wants big changes.
BP no tiene tiempo.
BP has no time.
No time, and now no chairman.
The board is going to have to move fast to fill that seat, and do it in a way that doesn't look desperate.
Which is a difficult needle to thread when you've just fired the last guy with no explanation.
Y los mercados miran.
And the markets are watching.
La confianza es muy importante en los negocios.
Confidence is very important in business.
Completely.
Uncertainty at the very top of a company, especially one already facing activist pressure, is the kind of thing that sends institutional investors toward the exit.
Or at least toward the phone to call their lawyers.
BP necesita un plan claro.
BP needs a clear plan.
Y necesita un presidente bueno.
And it needs a good chairman.
The deeper question for me is whether any chairman can actually fix what ails BP, or whether the company's problems are structural enough that they require something more drastic, like a genuine breakup or a merger.
Oye, Fletcher.
Hey, Fletcher.
Antes dices 'despedir' en inglés.
You said 'to fire' in English earlier.
En español también usamos esa palabra.
In Spanish we also use a word for that.
Hang on, what word are you getting at?
'Despedir.' Significa 'to fire' en el trabajo.
'Despedir.' It means 'to fire' at work.
Pero también significa 'to say goodbye.'
But it also means 'to say goodbye.'
Wait, the same verb covers both firing someone and saying goodbye to them?
That is either very economical or very dark, and I genuinely cannot decide which.
Los dos.
Both.
'La empresa despide a Manifold.' También: 'Yo me despido de mis amigos.' Es el mismo verbo.
'The company fires Manifold.' Also: 'I say goodbye to my friends.' Same verb.
So when Manifold walked out of BP headquarters for the last time, BP both fired him and said goodbye to him, and in Spanish that's just one word doing all of that at once.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Para Manifold, las dos cosas son iguales hoy.
For Manifold, both things are the same today.