BP has rarely been out of the headlines over the last year with top-level boardroom reshuffles and merger speculation. At its lowest point, Shell was seen as a default buyer.
Today’s annual meeting at Sunbury in Surrey will not be a tame affair. It will be the first appearance before shareholders both for chairman
Albert Manifold, who took the job last October, and for new arrival from Down Under, Meg O’Neill, the chief executive.
Annual meetings rarely live up to their billing. But there will be plenty for BP shareholders to sink their teeth into.
They are likely to be much more friendly to the board and executives than before Donald Trump’s assault on Iran and the subsequent revival in crude prices.
Crude costs have advanced some 60 per cent, to above $100 a barrel in latest dealings, and unleashed a bonanza for BP’s sophisticated trading arm.
Question time: BP’s annual meeting will be the first appearance before shareholders both for chairman Albert Manifold and for a new arrival from Down Under, Meg O’Neill, the chief exec
How fortunate that Manifold, in his enthusiasm to sell off extraneous assets and pay down debt, did not follow the advice of critics who wanted the trading arm divested.
Manifold cannot be expected to receive an easy ride.
The group’s decision to reject a climate change resolution from green activists Follow This, which demanded scenarios on falling oil and gas demand (pre-Gulf war), led antagonists including leading UK insurer Legal & General to demand Manifold’s head.
This is a little bizarre given the extensive search undertaken by BP senior independent director – and Aviva boss – Amanda Blanc, after Manifold’s predecessor Helge Lund was shown the door for not reining in climate change passions.
There is expected to be a vote against Manifold’s election, but dissidents may be hard pushed to meet the 20 per cent threshold that requires the board to keep close tabs on the target director.
A more commanding vote may be possible on a resolution from a shareholder coalition led by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility).
It is seeking forensic details on BP’s approach to capital spending. This also has been a long-standing gripe of activist investor (and BP shareholder) Elliott, which has been quieter since the share price has taken off. It has risen a shade under 60 per cent over the last 12 months.
The company can be expected to highlight seven major fossil-fuel projects started in 2025. Five are ahead of schedule, including BP’s largest discovery in a quarter of a century in offshore Brazil.
Meg O’Neill, the first female chief executive in big oil, couldn’t be blamed for being confused by the opposition to Manifold. BP spent much of the last several years defending its plan to have 40 per cent of its operations on renewables by 2030.
This was the goal set by ejected but not-lamented chief executive Bernard Looney. Now that BP has rowed back on climate change transformation it is under fire for neglect. You couldn’t make it up.
There is one resolution which needs to be firmly rejected and could be heading for defeat. The directors are asking for powers to hold future AGMs as hybrids, online and in person, or more radically online alone.
Aside from depriving investors of the customary cup of tea, abandoning in-person AGMs for online should not be tolerated. Shareholder democracy is the crowning glory of public companies.
Annual meetings provide the opportunity for the owners of companies – shareholders, institutional and private – to extract bosses from the gilded cages of private jets, limousines, big expense accounts, and armies of personal assistants, and look them in the eye.
Some AGMs may be ill-attended but putting them online, especially for regiments of older investors, is tantamount to shutting them out.
One of the great differentiators of listed companies from private equity plunderers taking over the world, is that major decisions – such as those in climate change – are not made behind closed doors.
We are told that O’Neill likes nothing better than to engage with investors and the media.
If she fulfils that objective alone today, she will have gone a long way to restoring confidence in Britain’s more than a century-old energy producer.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz reminds us that fossil fuels are much more than a transition to renewables.
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