Last month it was time to end banker bashing. Today ? at least judging by the body language of new chief executive Bob Dudley ? the moment had arrived to stop knocking BP.
Dudley used his first major announcement to smoothly brush aside disappointing full-year numbers and paint his vision of the group as some kind of pioneer ? hammering home its excellence as an "explorer" while promising to share the lessons learned from the Gulf of Mexico. The script effortlessly moved on to tease shareholders with the suggestion of a share buy-back (usually a foolproof way of buoying a struggling share price) before Dudley interrupted his presentation to relay some "good news" from the high court. In fact BP's Russian partners at TNK-BP ? still fuming over BP's share and Arctic deal with Russia's Rosneft ? had won their application for an injunction.
Dudley's confidence over all things Russian may or may not prove well-placed, but despite the slick presentation, has BP really changed? He was evasive about how much improvement the company needs to make on safety to catch its competitors, while BP remains an unrepentant deep driller for oil. The "new" strategy seems to revolve around selling certain assets for high prices. Was that level of creative thinking beyond BP before environmental and financial catastrophe forced its hand?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/01/bp-not-learned-from-mistakes
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