BP bosses fended off a shareholder backlash yesterday amid angry protests and claims their pay packets were “extreme and excessive”.
A rebellion by investors against executives at the oil giant was smaller than in previous years, however, with the board re-elected and securing 94% support for its salaries.
BP chief executive Bob Dudley’s salary rises slightly but his overall pay is cut from about £2.2million to £1.7million, because there is no repeat of the £511,000 share payout he received the previous year.
Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg will get the same £750,000 salary as the year before.
But the board of 14 men and two women came under fire repeatedly from the 900 shareholders who flocked to the Excel centre in London’s Docklands for BP’s annual meeting.
Guy Jubb, representing Edinburgh-based Standard Life Investments, a top investor in BP, called for a shake-up as he expressed “concern” that the bosses received “significant rewards for unchallenging performance targets”.
Another proxy shareholder said: “By the standards of British companies, this level is extreme and excessive.”
The fall-out and continuing legal action over the Deepwater Horizon disaster also cast a shadow over the company yesterday.
BP’s share price remains 30% lower than it was before the 2010 incident in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 men, and a US civil damages trial is expected to drag on for several months.
“This is a great corporation is being screwed by unscrupulous lawyers,” claimed one veteran shareholder.
The board also faced criticism over its involvement in environmentally controversial oilsand developments in Canada.
About 10 campaigners from the UK Tar Sands network handed protest leaflets to shareholders as they made their way from the train station to the conference venue.
Trouble flared inside the meeting, with five proxy shareholders raising the tarsand issue, before Mr Svanberg closed the subject and called on security staff to eject one campaigner who did not accept the decision; a move applauded by the majority in the room.
Security had already been an issue at the event, with many shareholders unhappy at the airport-style measures at the hall entrance.
“The easy solution is that we all go through naked,” one angry delegate told the board.
Despite several complaints, the board remained upbeat about the company’s future.
Mr Svanberg hailed last year’s £8.3billion sale of the group’s 50% stake in its strained TNK-BP partnership to Russia’s Rosneft, gaining nearly 20% of the world’s largest oil and gas producer in the deal, as one of the “most successful investments in the history of our industry”.
He added: “We end the year in good shape. We have reorganised, we have restructured, we are resolving the uncertainties that faced the company. We are going into the new year with momentum and greater confidence.”
Mr Dudley said BP had been carefully pruned and green shoots were beginning to appear.