Winners and losers of the week...BP, Lionhead Studios and Rupert Murdoch

Under its chief executive, Lord Browne, BP has gone to great pains in recent years to paint itself green. However, that painstakingly crafted image might as well have been doused with a barrel of Texas crude last week. Not only is the company being investigated for negligence due to a pipeline leak in Alaska, but it revealed in a sustainability report that it produced more carbon emissions in 2005 than the year before, and that more people, 27, died working for the company.

Peter Molyneux, the founder of the video game group Lionhead Studios and one of the industry's best-known developers, sold his company to Microsoft last week. Financial details were not disclosed, but Mr Molyneux, who is credited with inventing the god game genre, in which players influence a population, will surely be breathing a sigh of relief, as will the company's remaining employees. Lionhead laid off 50 people last month.

A year after he took over the scandal-ridden insurance giant American International Group, things are going well for chief executive Martin Sullivan. Not only did he take home $13.8m (£8m) in his first year, his company also won the right - for just £56m - to grace the shirts of Manchester United for the next four years. Mr Sullivan took over from Maurice "Hank" Greenberg as AIG dealt with an accounting and bid-rigging scandal.

In a rare move, Rupert Murdoch yielded to shareholder pressure last week and agreed to allow a vote on News Corp's poison pill takeover defence plan. The accord comes after a dozen institutions sued Mr Murdoch, who extended the measure last year without putting it to a vote despite prior promises to do so. The settlement avoids a trial, which was set to begin in a fortnight.