Was Tony Hayward right to stand down?
It's been one of those events that has seemed to be on the cards for weeks, but it was finally announced last night that he would be standing down at BP, to be replaced by Bob Dudley.
Was Tony Hayward right to stand down?
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It was inevitable I think that once the turner seemed to have been turned that BP would look for a fresh face to reflect that. Not quite sure how he's managed to negotiate a settlement though give the mess the company has been in.
One side of me says he did the honourable thing. The other says "fallguy for an arrogant US and UK govt scapegoat exercise that conveniently forgot some of the other major players in the incident".
Not that he of course is going to be too worried given the severance.
Agree, Tony. All the recent stress can't have been doing his health much good, and if it's the choice between more of the same and a £multi-million payoff, for me it's a no brainer...
He is the fall guy for sure and it's shameful how Obama went after him but it's probably understandable that he's gone. Once the event happened I think he did ok but obviously it was an incredible cock-up by the company and in our media age someone has to pay for such things.
He had no choice but go. However the US behaved unprofessional throughout this sorry episode blaming BP for everything, what about the US companies (halliburton etc) involved who seem to have avoided any responsibility.
It does seem incredibly common for bosses to get nice pay-outs for hopping it. See this chart from the Economist this week
Flipping heck Wayne, those are some pretty hefty numbers. Makes the Hayward payout look like chicken feed! How on earth are any of those justifiable?
I suppose the flip side of the huge wages is that companies exist to take commercial risks, so it's almost inevitable that at times things will go wrong. If you're not giving execs some kind of cushion should things fail then they will probably just become risk averse, which isn't really what we want is it?
Bob Dudley certainly doesn't seem any better. He has engineered a horrible mess in Russia. As if it wasn't bad enough that he wants to jump into bed with a 'company' that stole assets with the help of Putins thugs, it now appears that their existing joint venture in Russia prevented them from doing any such thing, so he's managed to annoy both Rosneft and BP-TNK whilst making himself look like an unethical idiot.
BP have fallen massively since the days of John Brown. Absolutely massively.
Nice to see BP getting plenty of stick at their AGM. For me the management has seriously lost its way.
There's an interesting bit of research here suggesting that companies that survive the experience of doing business in corrupt places, and learn from it, can develop an unusual competitive advantage that will serve them well when entering similar challenging markets around the world, according to this paper.
http://mobile.strategy-business.com/article/re00141