photo: AP / Lefteris PitarakisScuffles, protests mar BP shareholder meeting:
Scuffles between protesters and security guards marred BP's first annual shareholder meeting since the Gulf oil spill, with shrimpers blocked from entering Thursday's meeting to demand more compensation.
The protesters included five Gulf Coast residents who had planned to tell investors about the loss of their livelihoods and health problems after the spill. Outside the building, separate groups demonstrated over BP's polluting tar sands project in Canada and labor disputes in Britain.
"I've come all the way here from the Gulf Coast," Wilson said. "My community is gone, and they won't let me in."
Inside the venue, hundreds of BP investors who have watched the company lose a quarter of its market value - some $US55 billion - over the past year and lost their dividend payments questioned board members about excessive executive pay packets and a lack of transparency on safety improvements.
But there was also support for BP's board from some quarters, with new Chief Executive Bob Dudley frequently winning smatterings of applause for his comments, including his opening statement that "BP remains a great company with a great history and I believe a great future."
"Not every company gets such an opportunity and we don't intend to squander it," he added, stressing the company's three priorities post-spill as strengthening safety, winning back the company's reputation and restoring long-term value for shareholders.
Dudley and his fellow board members are battling to convince some institutional shareholders that they have a firm grip on the company's future after a year that began with the Gulf of Mexico disaster and is ending with a botched major oil exploration deal in Russia.
Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg received 92.9 per cent of votes in favor of his re-election, according to provisional results based on votes cast before the meeting. Bill Castell, the head of the safety, ethics and environment assurance committee, received just 75 per cent of votes for his reappointment.
There was also some resistance to a resolution to approve the BP remuneration report, which received just 89 per cent of votes in favor. The official count, which incorporates the votes cast during the meeting on Thursday, will be released Friday, BP said.
The company gained some critical breathing room on the Russian problem just hours before the meeting when Russia's OAO Rosneft agreed to move the deadline to complete a $16 billion share swap with BP from Thursday to May 16.
The deal was to cement BP's move forward from the Gulf spill and show it no longer needed to rely so heavily on the United States, where it is still barred from drilling in the Gulf.
The initiative ran aground after a quartet of Russian billionaires, BP's partners in the older TNK-BP venture, won an injunction in the London courts, claiming the new deal violates their own agreement with the London-based company.
Rosneft spokesman Rustam Kazharov declined to comment when asked whether the company planned to look for another partner to replace BP in the deal to explore the Russian sector of the Arctic.
In London, Dudley and Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg dodged questions from shareholders about why the company hadn't consulted more fully with TNK-BP before announcing the Rosneft deal.
"I think we have to be realistic," Svanberg said when asked if BP was confident of coming to an agreement with TNK-BP to lift the injunction.
"We are in the middle of a process involving three parties and exactly how that will unfold I don't think we should speculate here, but I assure you we will do what we can to land it in a good way."
Dudley said BP had made a joint offer with Rosneft for TNK-BP, but said BP would not offer large amounts of shares to resolve the dispute, particularly as BP believed it had not violated its agreement with TNK-BP.
As a mark of respect for the upcoming anniversary of the Macondo well explosion, Dudley read out the names of the 11 men killed in the April 20 incident that has so far cost BP some $40 billion - and former CEO Tony Hayward his job.
Outside the building, a rowdy group of local union members demonstrated over a dispute at a BP-owned factory in Hull in northern England, banging drums and blowing horns as they were watched by police.
More protesters did gain entry to the meeting and tried to access the stage during a discussion of the company's controversial tar sands project in Canada. They were dragged away by security.
Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association and one of those denied entry, had said he wanted to object to the compensation process, claiming many oystermen have been denied payments or given insufficient payouts.
"We've not been made whole: our fishing grounds have been depleted, our oysters are dead and we're not receiving the funds we need to support and sustain ourselves," Encalade said. "BP says they are paying out all this money. Where is it?"
Dudley said management intended to recommend to the board the appointment of an external expert to implement the recommendations of an internal report into the spill - as it did after the deadly Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 in which 15 people died.
"We're finding it isn't so easy to find someone. We want to make sure that person is independent and experienced," Dudley said.
Dudley also acknowledged unhappiness with a lack of detail about safety improvements in the company's annual report, agreeing information was "light" but would be stronger this year.
Before the meeting, Calpers, the biggest US public pension fund, and the Florida State Board of Administration said they would join other smaller US and European religious and ethical funds in voting against the reappointment of Castell.
The two state pension boards together own some 0.4 per cent of BP's stock.
Pirc, the investor advice service, and the Association of British Insurers have issued warnings about excessive pay packages for two BP executives. Iain Conn, BP's head of refining and Chief Financial Officer Byron Grote are receiving $505,000 and $621,000 for work not related to the oil spill.
Hayward also grabbed headlines with a $17.9 million pension, $1.6 million payoff and about $13 million in share options despite a series of public gaffes that led to his ceding the CEO post to Dudley.
-AP
NZ Herald
Thursday, April 14, 2011
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