Bernard Looney: BP’s woke warrior detoxifies oil

Bernard Looney wants to turn the oil giant he heads into an environmentally friendly force for good. He’s not the first to try, but there’s good reason to take him seriously. Jane Lewis reports.

Bernard Looney © BP
Bernard Looney tells it like it is
(Image credit: © BP)

What’s in a name? Quite a lot if you’re called Bernard Looney, says The Sunday Times. BP’s new boss admits his name has sometimes caused amusement. “I lived in America for nine years, says Looney. They say Ber-nard and I’d correct them and say it’s Ber-nard. A guy from Mississippi said, ‘Listen, when your last name is Looney, who cares what your first name is?’”

An Irishman who grew up on a dairy farm in County Kerry, Looney, 49, has the gift of the blarney. His observations on social media are admired by a rising generation of business hopefuls who rate his perspicacity. He often talks about “the need to challenge old habits to run a better business”, says the FT, regularly consulting a “20-something-year-old reverse mentor” to buff up his “woke” credentials. One of Looney’s biggest assets is his perceived credibility. When he halved BP’s dividend last week, it was a big blow for income investors, but the shares still jumped on the view that the CEO was telling it like it is.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.