08 March 2024 , 10:51
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Oil giant BP has been blasted for handing its new boss an £8million pay packet while millions of households are battling to make ends meet and war rages on in Ukraine.
Murray Auchincloss, who was BP’s finance boss, replaced chief executive Bernard Looney after he was dismissed in September over past relationships with colleagues. BP’s annual report showed Canadian Mr Auchincloss netted a just over £8million package last year. That included a whopping £6.5million in bonuses.
Critics said his pay was 230 times higher than the UK average annual salary and equal to the average energy bills of over 4,700 British households. Campaign group Global Witness claims BP has made £28billion in profit since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which sent wholesale energy prices soaring.
Mr Auchincloss prompted a backlash in early 2022 when he said BP had “more cash than we know what to do with” while households faced a devastating rise in energy bills. The 53-year-old was initially made interim CEO after Mr Looney’s sudden departure, and got the job on a permanent basis in January this year.
BP’s annual report showed he received a just over £1million salary for last year, £338,000 in “benefits”, and £190,000 towards his pension. On top of that he scooped almost £6.5million in annual and long-term bonuses. Alice Harrison, fossil fuels campaign leader at Global Witness, said: “The millions paid out to BP’s CEO contrast with the millions of Brits in energy poverty, showing the sickening reality of our broken energy system.
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“People everywhere, struggling to feed their families or heat their homes, have every right to be angry at BP’s huge profits and payouts. BP and its CEO count among the biggest winners of Russia’s war in Ukraine. BP, which still owns a big chunk of the Russian oil company Rosneft, profiteered massively from the resulting turbulence in energy markets, and now the firm has decided to give its CEO a multi-million, fat cat pat on the back whilst most people are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Profits at BP halved last year but it still made a colossal £11billion, its second biggest bonanza since 2012. Mr Looney was found to have misled the board over past relationships with colleagues. As revealed in December, he was denied more than £32million in pay and share awards.