BP ousts chair Manifold over conduct, deepening leadership crisis
Sudden firing after less than a year prolongs strategic uncertainty as investor confidence frays.
BP Plc fired chairman Albert Manifold on Tuesday (2026-05-26) with immediate effect, citing "serious" and "unacceptable" governance and conduct concerns in a unanimous board decision.2 Shares fell 4.3% to 527.4 pence in London trading that day, the steepest single-day drop since the company's last strategy reset.4
Manifold had only taken the role in July 2025, replacing Helge Lund after a near 25% vote against Lund's re-election at BP's 2025 annual general meeting.2 The ouster extends a pattern of board-level instability that has kept investors guessing about BP's direction since Bernard Looney's abrupt departure in 2023. Looney forfeited around £32.4 million in remuneration connected to his exit.2
The trigger for Manifold's dismissal was a set of unspecified complaints lodged with BP's board. The Wall Street Journal later reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Manifold had clashed with non-executive director Simon Henry and held a fractious relationship with chief executive Murray Auchincloss in the months before his firing.6 Manifold has publicly rejected what he called a "false narrative" around his departure and launched a defence of his short tenure.5
BP's senior independent director Joe O'Neill, who joined the board in April, has taken over as interim chair.3 Will Hares, senior energy analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said O'Neill and whoever becomes permanent chair "must rekindle investor confidence in the company's strategy and internal controls."3 BP has struggled to articulate a consistent pathway between its legacy oil and gas business and its low-carbon ambitions, leaving it exposed to pressure from both climate-focused and fossil-fuel-focused shareholders.
Maurizio Carulli, global energy analyst at Quilter Cheviot, called Manifold's departure "certainly a surprise" but noted the timing compounds a broader recovery problem.5 BP's London-listed shares had already underperformed the broader European energy sector this year, weighed down by weak refining margins and uncertainty about the UK North Sea fiscal regime. The leadership upheaval gives investors another reason to take money off the table.
Some analysts see an opportunity. A clean break with Manifold, however ugly, removes a source of board-level friction that could have paralysed decision-making on BP's next strategy update, due in early 2027.3 The risk is that the search for a permanent chair drags on and the board remains in caretaker mode through a period when the company needs to make big calls on upstream investment, dividend policy and its net-zero timeline.
The backdrop for European oil majors is already shifting. Equinor and Aker BP agreed a North Sea and Barents Sea stakes swap on Friday (2026-05-22), a deal that consolidates Norwegian continental shelf positions and signals a focus on core acreage.1 Whether BP will be an active participant in North Sea portfolio rationalisation or a seller depends on whether it can first stabilise its board. The company's UK upstream business has faced headwinds from the windfall tax extension and rising decommissioning costs.
BP's board must name a permanent chair before it can credibly present any strategic pivot to the market. The next quarterly results, due in early August, will be the first test of whether interim chair O'Neill can stabilise the narrative. Until then, BP's share price is likely to carry a governance discount relative to Shell and TotalEnergies.4