BP removes chair Albert Manifold over ‘serious’ governance and conduct concerns

Oil company is FTSE’s biggest faller as chair departs immediately after only eight months in the role

BP has removed its chair, Albert Manifold, with the oil company’s board saying it had serious concerns about “important governance standards, oversight and conduct”.

The FTSE 100 company announced Manifold’s departure with immediate effect on Tuesday, without giving further details. He had lasted only eight months in the role.

BP’s share price slumped by 9% in the minutes after the announcement just before lunchtime in London before recovering slightly to a 6% decline, making it the FTSE’s top faller.

Amanda Blanc, the senior independent director at BP and chief executive of the insurance company Aviva, 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.”

Manifold’s conduct was considered too aggressive by other directors, and he was also seen as trying to exert control in the manner of an executive rather than of a chair, according to reports. The FT reported that senior colleagues felt belittled by Manifold, and that the newly installed chief executive, Meg O’Neill, had bristled at some of his interventions. BP and Manifold were approached for comment.

Manifold was appointed as BP’s chair in October 2025, after serving as chief executive of the Irish building materials company CRH, and was tasked with continuing a change in the oil company’s strategy, to refocus on fossil fuel extraction, and ditch renewable energy investments.

He rapidly ousted BP’s chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, after less than two years in the role, and hired O’Neill to take over in December.

Manifold is the second senior leader at BP to lose his job for conduct reasons within three years. Auchincloss’s predecessor, Bernard Looney, was forced out in September 2023 for failing to disclose sexual relationships with colleagues when he was made chief executive.

Looney had created a gas and low-carbon energy division. However, O’Neill, an American who joined from Australia’s Woodside Petroleum, in April reversed that move, shifting back to an upstream oil and gas production unit and a downstream business focused on refining and distributing fuels and retail activities.

Maurizio Carulli, global energy analyst at Quilter Cheviot, a wealth manager, said: “Whilst the news is obviously a short-term negative, it is important to remember that BP has made significant operational improvements and strategic refocusing over the past year, and this is the result of the successful efforts of the entire organisation and its management, not just of one person.”

Even in his short time in the job, Manifold had riled some investors. 18% of the votes at his first annual meeting in charge of the board went against his re-election, after he blocked a resolution by Follow This, a shareholder group focused on the environment. Follow This had asked the company to report on how it would protect shareholder value if demand for oil and gas falls.

Mark van Baal, director of Follow This, said BP still needed to reform its governance structures, despite Manifold’s removal. “The new chair must bring real expertise in governance, climate risk and transition risk, otherwise nothing changes,” he said.

BP will now start a search for its third chair in two years, after Helge Lund was ousted in 2025 in reaction to investor pressure, including from the US hedge fund Elliott Advisors. BP has appointed Ian Tyler, a board member, as interim chair with immediate effect. Tyler is a former chief executive of the FTSE 250 infrastructure group Balfour Beatty. He is also chair of Grafton Group, a FTSE 250 building supplies company, and a director at the FTSE 100 mining company Anglo American.

Tyler gave O’Neill strong backing in a statement published on Tuesday. He said BP’s board had been “very impressed” and that she had “real clarity about the direction and opportunity for the business”.