Translated material
On the last voyage
Robert Dudley will handle the accident cleanup
After being questioned by US congressmen for seven hours about the circumstances leading up to the Deepwater Horizon accident (see Vremya Novostey, June 18), BP chief executive Tony Hayward traveled to the Isle of Wight on Friday for one of the “rare free moments of his life” to take participation in the regatta held by JP Morgan bank. The top manager set off on his own yacht under the symbolic name “Bob” (diminutive of Robert. - Ed. ). On the same day, BP Chairman Carl-Henrik Svanberg announced that Mr. Hayward would hand over the leadership of the Gulf of Mexico disaster response to the company's managing director, Robert Dudley.According to Mr. Swanberg, the current head of the corporation's attempts to “completely personally control the situation” backfired on him and the company. “Obviously, people perceived some of Tony’s remarks negatively,” added the BP chairman. Obviously, other managers will have to change the perception of the company. Although BP has not yet forced the election of a new head, according to some reports, waiting for the completion of the operation to eliminate the leak, two leaders have already emerged in the hardware struggle: Ian Conn, who is responsible for refining and sales, and the curator of BP’s business in America and Asia, Robert Dudley, previously headed the Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP. Both of them have recently been actively involved in fulfilling the duties of the head of the corporation. For example, Mr. Conn took over the day-to-day operations of the company in London while Mr. Hayward went to the scene of the accident. The second candidate, Robert Dudley, in turn took over the management of the Gulf of Mexico cleanup in Houston.
It is worth noting that regardless of which of the above becomes the new head of BP, he will have to face the same problems: payment of multi-billion dollar compensation (BP has already paid more than $100 million in claims from residents and firms of coastal states alone), a sharp drop in the company’s market value and a narrowing of opportunities to attract borrowed funds. By the way, on Friday the international agency Moody's, following the Fitch agency, again lowered BP's credit rating by three levels - from Aa2 to A2.