BP has sacked its chairman Albert Manifold with immediate effect, citing unacceptable governance and conduct issues in the latest blow to a company that has struggled to stabilise its leadership for years.<\/p>\n
The board said it had been “surprised and disappointed” to learn of the issues and had taken “decisive action,” without elaborating on the specifics.<\/p>\n
His sudden departure prolongs a period of severe leadership turmoil at BP, coming at a moment when the company was supposed to be turning itself around from years of poor performance.<\/p>\n
London-listed shares fell as much as 9% on the news before paring losses and were last seen trading down nearly 6%.<\/p>\n
Manifold had been in the role for less than eight months, having taken over as chairman in October 2025. He first joined the board in September 2025 as chair-elect.<\/p>\n
He had played a central role in accelerating BP’s strategic pivot back toward fossil fuels, cutting spending on transition energy assets in a bid to revive the company’s ailing share price.<\/p>\n
He had also been instrumental in the removal of former chief executive Murray Auchincloss and the appointment of his replacement, Meg O’Neill.<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
Another change at the top <\/p>\n
Board member Ian Tyler has been appointed interim chair with immediate effect while a search for a permanent successor gets under way.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Tyler said the board had “deep conviction” in BP’s strategic direction and praised O’Neill’s leadership since joining as chief executive, describing her decision to move to a clearly defined upstream\/downstream model as bold and necessary.<\/p>\n
The dismissal is the latest chapter in a turbulent period at BP, with former chief executive Bernard Looney resigning in September 2023 after he failed to disclose past sexual relationships with colleagues when he took on the role.<\/p>\n
The company has since been cutting debt, chasing shareholder returns and attempting to simplify its structure under sustained pressure from investors.<\/p>\n
BP has not specified what the governance and conduct concerns involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BP has sacked its chairman Albert Manifold with immediate effect, citing unacceptable governance and conduct issues in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21198],"tags":[9141,67,6704,24741],"class_list":["post-49715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bp","tag-albert-manifold","tag-bp","tag-bp-plc","tag-immediate-effect"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116645143696430931","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}