BP Awards Top Executives Maximum Bonuses Despite Cutting 7000 Jobs and Losing $5.2b
The awards follow a year in which the company lost $5.2 billion as oil prices plummeted. Since the start of 2016 it has announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs and has slashed spending to help manage the slump.
A shareholder advisory group has criticised BP (LON:BP) for its decision to award its top directors their maximum bonuses for last year and has advised investors to vote against the oil giant’s payouts, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
The FTSE 100 group, which has suffered alongside other energy producers from the ongoing oil price weakness, unveiled that its earnings had more than halved last year.
BP’s share price has inched higher in today’s session, having added 0.24 percent to 338.25p as of 14:29 BST, slightly underperforming the broader London market. The group’s shares have lost nearly 24 percent of their value over the past year and are down about five percent in the year-to-date.
The WSJ quoted proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis as saying in a March report that it believed that “BP’s shareholders should question whether payouts were fully earned in respect of the past fiscal year relative to the company’s performance”.
The FTSE 100 energy group revealed last month that its chief executive Bob Dudley would receive a cash bonus of $1.4 million for last year, up from $1 million in 2014. His total bonus for the year amounted to $4.2 million, marking the maximum amount he was eligible to receive. Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary also received 100 percent of his possible bonus. BP, however, posted a 51-percent drop in underlying earnings for 2015 to $5.9 billion, and recorded a $5.2-billion loss for the year, including impairments.
“BP executives performed strongly in a difficult environment in 2015, managing the things they could control and for which they were accountable,” a BP spokesman told the WSJ, adding that “safety and operational risk performance was excellent and BP responded quickly and decisively to the drop in oil price”.
BP’s annual general meeting is scheduled for next Thursday, April 14, according to the group’s website.
As of 15:01 BST, Wednesday, 06 April, BP plc share price is 337.82p.
