Shares dropped as much as 9% in London before paring losses to about 4%, CNBC reports.<\/p>\n
The timing could not be worse. <\/p>\n
Brent crude is trading above $110 a barrel. BP just posted its strongest quarterly profit since 2022. And the company’s pivot back to oil and gas finally looked like it was paying off.<\/p>\n
Now investors get a fresh leadership crisis<\/strong> instead.<\/p>\n jetcityimage / Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The board offered no specifics<\/strong> on what Manifold actually did. The statement only described the conduct as “unacceptable<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n Senior Independent Director Amanda Blanc said the board was “surprised and disappointed to learn of governance oversight and conduct issues.”<\/p>\n Director Ian Tyler, a non-executive on the board since last April, takes over as interim chair<\/strong> while BP searches for a permanent replacement.<\/p>\n Manifold, the former CEO of Irish building materials group CRH, had already survived an investor rebellion at BP’s annual meeting last month. More than 18% of shareholders voted against his re-election after Glass Lewis raised governance concerns, the Irish Times reported.<\/p>\n That makes Tuesday’s firing the second governance shock at BP in under a month, per CNN Business.<\/p>\n BP is one of the world’s seven oil and gas supermajors, alongside ExxonMobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX), and Shell (SHEL).<\/p>\n The company carries a market cap of roughly $114 billion and trailing 12-month revenue around $195 billion.<\/p>\n More Oil:<\/strong><\/p>\n Production sits at 2.3 million barrels of oil <\/strong>equivalent per day<\/strong>, spanning upstream drilling, refining, retail fuel stations, aviation fuel, Castrol lubricants, and a trading desk that has quietly become one of the most profitable on Wall Street.<\/p>\n About 400,000 barrels per day<\/strong> come from the Middle East<\/strong>, with 100,000 of those typically exported through the Strait of Hormuz, CEO Meg O’Neill confirmed on the first-quarter earnings call.<\/p>\n However, it is worth noting that the Hormuz exposure has been both a curse and a windfall in 2026.<\/p>\n The Iran war that broke out in late February sent Brent crude on one of the wildest rides in modern energy markets.<\/p>\n Prices spiked above $130 in late March, settled near $110 in April, and remain elevated as ceasefire talks with the U.S. drag on. JPMorgan warned Brent could “overshoot toward $150” if the Strait stays shut.<\/p>\n This is exactly the environment a focused, well-governed oil major should be cashing in on.<\/p>\n BP did. Q1 profit hit $3.2 billion, up 132% year over year and well ahead of the $2.67 billion analysts expected, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n Related: ConocoPhillips CEO sounds alarm on a growing oil problem<\/strong><\/p>\n Group underlying replacement cost profit before interest and tax rose to $6.3 billion, from $4.4 billion in the prior quarter, per BP’s SEC filing.<\/p>\n Goldman Sachs sees Brent averaging $90 in the second quarter and $82 in the third, leaving plenty of room for cash generation.<\/strong><\/p>\n The market should have rewarded that. Instead, investors now have to price in another round of boardroom uncertainty.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is BP’s third chairman and third CEO in under three years.<\/p>\n Morningstar’s Lindsey Stewart called BP “the most volatile boardroom” among the oil supermajors and said the company “should be taking credit for the rewards of its strategic reset,” The Guardian reported.<\/p>\n Instead, governance keeps being the story.<\/p>\n BP shares have rallied this year on the oil price surge, but the stock still trades at a discount to Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil on most multiples.<\/p>\n The bull case rests on three things holding together: O’Neill executing the reset, oil prices staying elevated, and the board stabilizing fast enough to keep Elliott engaged rather than escalating.<\/p>\n If any of those crack, the discount widens.<\/p>\n For investors weighing BP today, the calculus is straightforward. The fundamentals are strong, the dividend looks safe, and Hormuz risk premium is real. But governance turmoil at a company already on its third chair in three years is the kind of friction that can keep multiples compressed even when earnings deliver.<\/p>\n Watch the chair search closely. The name BP picks will signal whether this is a clean break or another lap of the same dysfunction.<\/p>\n Related: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire sells $8B shares of oil giant<\/strong><\/p>\n #announces #major #shakeup #global #oil #price #surge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BP p.l.c (BP) just did the one thing oil investors didn’t want to see right now. The British supermajor unanimously removed Chair Albert Manifold on Tuesday, May 26, less than… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[2657,485,900,280,100,4765,610],"class_list":["post-4267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular","tag-announces","tag-global","tag-major","tag-oil","tag-price","tag-shakeup","tag-surge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/.image\/NDA6MDAwMDAwMDAzMDU0OTE5\/photo-3054919.jpg?profile=rss\")
What BP said about the chairman’s removal<\/h2>\n
How big BP is and what it actually produces<\/h2>\n
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Why surging oil prices make the timing brutal<\/h2>\n
The bigger leadership problem investors keep flagging<\/h2>\n
What BP investors are tracking right now<\/h3>\n
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What this means for BP stock from here<\/h2>\n