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Daily Telegraph: BP bosses miss out on £10.7m bonuses

Last Updated: 1:30am GMT 05/03/2008
By Russell Hotten

BP’s top executives have missed out on share bonuses worth a potential £10.7m after the company’s dreadful performance in 2007.

Chief executive Tony Hayward failed to qualify for up to £2.3m in share options after a troubled year in which his predecessor Lord Browne resigned and BP suffered operational problems.

According to BP’s annual report: “Performance failed to meet satisfactory levels and consequently no shares will vest in the plan for 2005-07.”

Iain Conn, the head of refining and marketing, missed out on a possible £2.2m payout, and Byron Grote, the chief financial officer, on a £2.7m bonus.

The incentive scheme involves benchmarking BP against its rivals.

BP finished last behind four rivals – Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, France’s Total, and US giants Chevron and ExxonMobil – in its returns to shareholders and overall business performance.

Typically, about a third of the possible shares under the scheme are granted but the lack of any bonus award at all underlines the difficulties faced by the firm.

BP was rocked last year when Lord Browne resigned after lying to a court in a bid to cover up newspaper stories about his private life. The 2005 Texas City refinery explosion, start-up delays at the Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico, and pipeline leaks at Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay also hit the company in 2007.

As expected, the annual report confirmed that Lord Browne got a total payout of £5.3m last year in salary, bonuses and share awards, plus a one-off payment of one year’s salary. He also has a pension pot worth £21.55m after 41 years’ service at BP.

Despite losing out on the share award, Mr Hayward received £2.15m in salary and bonuses. Last year he described BP’s operational performance as “dreadful” and is restructuring to strip out layers of management and shed 5,000 jobs.

The annual report disclosed that BP has raised the amount of money set aside to settle claims from the Texas City blast to $2.1bn (£1bn).

The company has paid more than the $1.6bn it had reserved for claims to settle more than 2,000 cases.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/05/cnbp105.xml

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