Jim Armitage: Shareholders celebrate spring, but is BP listening?
In the hushed environs of fund-management offices in London and Edinburgh, there’s an unmistakable air of jubilation.
Not just because it’s the end of the first week back from the ski slopes but also thanks to their revolution against Bob’s Piggybank. Er… I mean BP.
Anger about Bob Dudley’s pay had been building for months through the Investor Forum — the arm of the Investment Association where rival fundsters chat about their common grievances.
Yesterday’s co-ordinated effort, they hope, sent a signal about corporate pay to boardrooms around the world: tie management pay to our returns, or else. WPP, AstraZeneca, Centrica, beware.
British fund managers are a conservative bunch, not naturally inclined to rock the boat. So you’re unlikely to find one prepared to demand BP scalps. Even remuneration committee chairman Dame Ann Dowling seems safe for now, despite the pressure from Pirc, the shareholders’ provisional wing.
Perhaps their caution has some grounds: remember how we bayed for Alison Carnwath’s head at Barclays over Bob Diamond’s pay in 2012, only for it later to emerge that she’d been the lone voice arguing against it?
Shareholders say that they’re giving the dame one last chance to fix BP’s pay next time around.
The trouble is, they’d made it plain to the board that they were unhappy long before yesterday’s vote, yet BP shovelled Dudley his cash anyway.
Frankly, this is a company that doesn’t seem to care what investors think.
