On 26 May, the BP Board put out an extraordinary statement, saying that:
‘…it has today unanimously decided that Albert Manifold should no longer serve as Chair and Director with immediate effect. This follows serious concerns raised to the Board related to important governance standards, oversight and conduct.
Amanda Blanc, Senior Independent Director at bp, said: “Albert has helped bring a welcome focus and pace to bp’s transformation. However, the board has been surprised and disappointed to learn of governance oversight and conduct issues it deems unacceptable and has taken decisive action.”’
BP has, of course, had a turbulent recent record at board level. CEO Bernard Looney departed in 2023, and Chairman Helge Lund left in 2025. Murray Auchincloss became CEO in January 2024, but, after Albert Manifold took over as Chairman in October 2025, Auchincloss himself stood down less than three months later, in December 2025. Manifold then played a leading role in the recruitment of another new chief executive, Meg O’Neill, who took office in April 2026, but himself stood down in May.
This has all taken place against a backdrop of intense strategic debate about BP’s future. The company has oscillated between an ambitious green-energy transition and a renewed focus on oil and gas, with differing views on how quickly BP should adapt to the energy transition and where it should allocate capital.
However, this latest disagreement doesn’t seem to be about strategy, but about people issues, and in particular the Chairman, Manifold, who has been accused of ‘governance oversight and conduct issues it (the board) deems unacceptable…’. This situation is unusual, not only in the exceptional turnover at the top, but in an official statement being put out with fairly strong, but unspecific, allegations. Usually, a board gets away with platitudes, but here Manifold gets it with both barrels.
Someone has been briefing more specific complaints, but I won’t dignify that by repeating gossip. Manifold has also apparently put out a fairly lengthy response denying the accusations, but that statement is not, as far as I can see, publically available.
If we ignore the tittle tattle and the gossip (and I have no inside knowledge), we can however reasonably nevertheless conclude that the bp board doesn’t seem a very happy or settled place. This instability can’t be good for either employees or shareholders, but this is a matter for the board, and ultimately their shareholders.
According to the 2025 Annual Report, the previous year’s board evaluation ‘highlighted the continuing importance of succession planning’. Moreover, the departure of Helge Lund ‘offered an opportunity, alongside the board’s established performance-evaluation processes, for the continuing directors to reflect on the roles and performance of the board and its committees. This in turn influenced the skills, experience and leadership credentials that were sought from the new board chair and, then also, the new CEO’. As far as I can tell, this ‘reflection’ seems to have replaced a formal board evaluation in 2025.
The board appears to have suffered buyers’ remorse fairly quickly about their new Chairman, which brings into strong question the performance of the Board and its recruitment process. BP doesn’t have a Nomination Committee as such, and appears to have formed ad hoc committees to recruit CEOs and Chairs. BP has not disclosed the attributes it was seeking in a new chair, but it seems to have prioritised executive leadership and transformation experience over the more traditional profile of an experienced non-executive chair. Manifold arrived with an outstanding record as a chief executive, but relatively limited non-executive experience, and no prior experience as chair of a major listed company.
Aside from the specifics of bp, this sad affair highlights some of the problems we still have with board performance and governance.
The Chair role
It is the most important role in the board so directors should be very clear what they really want and what they don’t. It’s a statement of the obvious, but it clearly caught bp out.
Selection of the Chair
Boards often recruit against abstract attributes such as ‘gravitas’, ‘leadership style’ or ‘cultural fit’, but actually past behaviour in comparable situations is usually a better predictor of future success. Directors shouldn’t ask: “what is this candidate like?” but: “how has this candidate behaved when under pressure, dealing with conflict, leading a board, challenging management, or exercising authority?” If the candidate has no experience in the situations they will face in the new role, a board risks stepping into the unknown. It may still want to go ahead, but this should then be treated as a risk and mitigations identified in case problems arise. For example, how would the board handle it if a new Chair reverted to more familiar executive behaviours and became too hands on?
Scapegoats
When organisations encounter failure, there is a natural tendency to identify an individual culprit – a scapegoat to be sacrificed. Yet board failures are rarely the product of one person’s behaviour alone. What system of decisions, assumptions and incentives led to this outcome? Hopefully the next bp Annual Report will contain an honest post-mortem as to why the Chairman appointment proved unsuccessful, and why they felt unable to make a longer effort to make it work.
Board evaluation
Board evaluations are frequently a waste of time and often simply demonstrate directors’ over-confidence and lack of challenge. Boards should take them more seriously and more critically. It would help if they broadened discussions to board dynamics, how power is wielded and whether enough challenge is being made. If, for example, a board is generally over-confident and lacking in challenge, you wouldn’t be surprised if it evaluates its own performance quite highly! That is not a criticism of any board (let alone bp), it’s just the way humans work.
Whatever the facts behind the Manifold episode, the public record already raises important questions about board succession, leadership assessment, governance processes and how boards respond when appointments go wrong. These are precisely the issues explored in my new book, with Stephen Jarvis, Why Companies Fail: Exposing Human Performance in the Boardroom, published on 1 October and available for preorder now at Amazon
