BP paid its boss £8m last year and clawed back £3m from old chief Looney

Murray Auchincloss took up the position as chief executive in September, initially on an interim basis.

The oil giant paid its boss more than £8 million last year (Nicholas T Ansell/PA) (PA Wire)

BP’s new boss was paid more than £8 million last year, before he took over the top job full time from his ousted predecessor.

Murray Auchincloss’s pay package consisted of more than £1.5 million in salary, benefits and cash in lieu of pension.

He was also handed a £1.8 million bonus, and a little under £4.7 million in shares that were linked to performance.

Mr Auchincloss was chief financial officer for most of 2023, but took over as interim chief executive in September when his predecessor stepped down.

The millions paid out to BP's CEO contrast with the millions of Brits in energy poverty, showing the sickening reality of our broken energy system

Alice Harrison, Global Witness

In January the Canadian businessman was appointed permanent chief executive of BP.

His pay for 2023 is around £2 million more than he made in 2022 as finance boss.

The pay was revealed on Friday in the company’s annual report.

It also showed that former chief executive Bernard Looney’s pay package for 2023 saw him hand back £1.8 million to the business.

His pay was £1.2 million for the year, but the company clawed back nearly £3 million from him from past years’ pay.

Mr Looney left BP with immediate effect in September.

He was accused by the board of not being honest when discussing past romantic relationships with colleagues.

The board said it had initially been told about Mr Looney’s former relationships in May 2022 by an anonymous source.

It said that when questioned, Mr Looney disclosed “a small number of historical relationships with colleagues prior to becoming CEO”.

The company said it had not found any breach of BP’s code of conduct at the time, and was given assurances by Mr Looney around disclosure.

But last year “further allegations of a similar nature” emerged and Mr Looney “did not profile details of all relationships”.

It brought the Irishman’s three-decade career with BP to a close.

It also cost him dearly financially.

The company later stripped him of a £32.4 million payout, saying he was responsible for “serious misconduct”.

Most of that money was £25 million in unvested share awards that he would have been handed based on performance.

But the business would also claw back some payments it had already made to Mr Looney, including half of his cash bonus in 2022.

The board said that he “should not retain any variable pay relating to service following the date of the misleading assurances”.

Alice Harrison, fossil fuels campaign leader at Global Witness, said: “The millions paid out to BP’s CEO contrast with the millions of Brits in energy poverty, showing the sickening reality of our broken energy system.

“People everywhere, struggling to feed their families or heat their homes, have every right to be angry at BP’s huge profits and payouts.”

She added: “The Government is missing the opportunity to introduce a serious windfall tax and CEO bonus tax.”