BP CEO leaves office after admitting to affairs with colleagues

BBP said Ernard Looney took up his role in February 2020, and will now leave his position, with immediate effect, to be replaced on an interim basis by CFO Murray Auchincloss.

The group said in a press release, “BP announces that Bernard Looney has informed the group that he will resign from his position as managing director with immediate effect,” after he admitted “that he was not completely transparent.”

The giant hydrocarbon company indicated in the statement that it learned in May 2022 of “allegations (…) related to Lonnie’s behavior regarding personal relationships with his colleagues in the group.”

An internal investigation was launched, during which the 53-year-old general manager admitted to “a small number of previous relationships with colleagues before he became general director.”

The oil company explained that “no violation of the group’s code of conduct was observed.”

But “new allegations of a similar nature” have emerged “recently,” and “today Looney informed the group that he acknowledged that he had not been completely transparent in his previous statements.”

“The group has strong values ​​and the Board expects everyone within it to act in accordance with these values. All directors in particular are expected to lead by example and demonstrate good judgment to gain the trust of others,” BP says.

Bernard Looney, who is of Irish descent, joined BP as an engineer in 1991 and spent his entire career there, holding various operational and management positions in several countries, including the United States, Vietnam and the United Kingdom.

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