Thursday 14 April 2011

BP's Omnishambles

Ever close is my demand to Nick Drew for a dinner (or was it a drink, inflation is terrible these days) over the shenanigans at BP.

They have an annual meeting today and the shareholders should be spitting fire at the board.

Firstly in the last year they have had the Macondo disaster, on balance the company did OK with it after a while, but the price they paid was the end of their US business and a cool $30 billion off the stock price.

The US was a 1/3rd of their business, so the company is left with a major strategic dilemma

Now, the new strategy was to do tie up's in BRIC Countries and it started with India. So far, so good. The though came this insane deal with Rosneft. Now Bob Dudley, chased out of Russia before by the BP JV partner's of TNK-BP, should know how Russia works. The latest twist to the story is that Rosneft and BP have offered a premium to buy our TNK-BP and been rebutted. Now BPO is left in a very sticky situation as Rosneft can really walk away from the deal and offer it to Shell, Total - anyone really, who will scoop it up delightedly. Of course, TNK-BP is going to sue its parent company too!

It looks very bad management from Dudley and the Carl 'The Ghost' Svanberg. I can't see how BP get through this mess well at the moment, it will take a miracle unless there is some shady deal with Putin underneath which in itself is a hostage to fortune for the future.

I won't be buying shares in BP anytime soon.

5 comments:

Nick Drew said...

yup ! not looking good

Nick Drew said...

however, just before I leave the country ... I deposit the following questions for Mr Q's Question Time League tonite

1) Royal Wedding must feature somewhere, somehow
2) must Oxbridge admit the personal nominees of Cameron & Clegg ?
3) immigration, who's right, Cameron or Cable ?
4) shall we all boo the Tories on the NHS, 'pause for reflection' and all ? - altogether now ...
5) are the Scouse LibDems right to be demanding Clegg leaves the coalition ?

wildcard: EHCR ruling might creep in

James Higham said...

It would pay to know who BP are underwritten by. Who'd not let it go under.

Dick the Prick said...

It's an education coming here - was chatting about Rossneft in the boozer last week and eruditely predicted it would all go tits up. Muchos gracias.

As per Mr Drew, i too am indiposed for a while and due to my forgetfullness last week and securing my progression to bottom of the table security. However:

Nurses, NHS - is Lansley a penis?

Libya still

Immigration - why the devil not but perhapps the BBC won't allow such heresy

Unemployment down - whoo hoo, hee hee, not even been drinking!

Wild card - BP & pollution - isn't oil just sooo ghastly?

appointmetotheboard said...

Hold on. Isn't little Tony Hayward at TNK-BP? Suing the parent company hardly seems like much of a way to say thanks for a £15m pay off..