He’s getting his life back, just like he wanted.
BP’s troubled chief executive, Tony Hayward, got the boot at BP’s board meeting Monday. He came on just three years ago as Mr. Clean who was going to patch up BP’s troubled image and reputation, and instead oversaw it being darkened almost beyond repair with the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil disaster tarnishing shores from Louisiana to Florida.
“The Gulf of Mexico explosion was a terrible tragedy for which – as the man in charge of BP when it happened – I will always feel a deep responsibility, regardless of where blame is ultimately found to lie,” Haywood said in a statement.
Hayward may walk away a broken man, but he’s far from broke – he gets a “golden parachute” of £1m (about $1.5 million) and a fat 6- or 7-figure pension. Plus BP is shunting him to the board of their Russian joint-venture company (which is probably NOT the equivalent of being sent to the Russian front during WWII).
Various parties have noted that Hayward was supposed to be the salvation of the company after the disastrous rule of his predecessor, Lord John Browne. But in three years he couldn’t steer the oil company that has received more EPA fines and safety violation citations than all the rest combined away from the rocks of disaster. And now he’s gone down with the ship.
“Hayward gets life back; American workers still dead” trumped the headline from Robert Cavnar’s piece at the Daily Hurricane.
Meanwhile, over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cynthia Tucker notes that “Tony Hayward isn’t BP’s biggest problem – Greed is”
The seeming insensitivity of the gaffe-prone Hayward infuriated an American public already angry about the spill. But the real problems lay with a company culture that focused on profits above everything else.
Why does this man not look happy?
The Wall Street Journal noted the resignation came
“in recognition of the fact that Mr. Hayward was no longer seen as able to address one of the company’s most crucial tasks: repairing BP’s reputation and restoring its credibility in the critical U.S. market, where it is the biggest oil and gas producer.”
Hayward’s replacement should be a better PR sell to Americans – Robert Dudley is the Mississipi boy the company trotted out last month to be their public face (after Hayward botched that mission badly). So they already know he’ll play well on the evening news. And coming from Amoco (joining BP when they purchased that company in 1998), maybe he might finally be able to bring a different culture to BP. ‘Cause they can sure use one. He even (briefly) oversaw BP’s solar, wind and hydrogen businesses.
There is also the question of just when Hayward is going. Initial reports had said he’d be gone immediately, but
In other news, BP also announced a record loss – “one of the largest corporate losses in British history”.
In its second-quarter results, the company has set aside $32.2bn (£20.7bn) to meet the cost of the clean-up, far higher than the City had expected and plunging the company almost $17bn into the red. To try to deal with the mounting costs of the spill created by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April, BP said it plans to sell $30bn worth of assets – predominantly oil and gas fields – over the next 18 months.
(Photos from BP)
