New BP boss gets £8m pay packet in 2023

BP’s new boss Murray Auchincloss received a pay packet worth just over £8m last year.

Mr Auchincloss took over as chief executive on an interim basis in September, before being confirmed in the job in January.

The campaign group Global Witness said his pay highlighted “the sickening reality of our broken energy system”.

His appointment followed the abrupt departure of his predecessor, Bernard Looney, amid a review of his personal relationships with colleagues.

Mr Looney had spent his career at BP, which he joined in 1991 as a drilling engineer.

Prior to taking the top job, Mr Auchincloss had worked as BP’s chief financial officer.

His pay for the year included salary of £1.02m, a bonus of £1.8m and share-based rewards worth worth £4.6m, as well as other benefits.

Mr Looney, who earned more than £10m in 2022, was obliged to repay BP £1.8m last year after leaving the company under a cloud.

He did receive a basic salary of £1.18m, but that was more than outweighed by the loss of bonuses and share-based awards from previous years, worth nearly 3m.

BP previously announced that Mr Looney would forfeit up to £32.4m after his departure, including nearly £25m in long-term share awards.

At the time it said the former boss had “knowingly misled” the board about his personal relationships.

In 2023, BP made a full year profit of $13.8bn (£10.7bn), down from a record $27.7bn in 2022, when oil prices soared as a result of economies recovering from the coronavirus pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

While earnings fell by a large margin, 2022's figure was still the company’s second-highest profit in a decade.

Global Witness accused BP of giving its chief executive “a multi-million, fat cat pat on the back” after becoming “one of the biggest winners of Russia’s war in Ukraine” while most people were “living paycheck to paycheck”.