Bernard Looney shows why every board should be braced for scandal

Bernard Looney, the fallen BP chief, always had a certain swagger about him. I’ve no idea whether he was unsafe in taxis, but he was certainly prone to unguarded remarks.

‘Not every barrel of oil in the world will get produced’ was a bold way, back in 2018, to introduce BP shareholders to the idea that the world’s energy giants will one day have to strand remaining carbon assets if they really intend to achieve net-zero targets. ‘This is literally a cash machine’ was not the best way to describe BP’s profit performance in November 2021, when British households were beginning to feel the pain of soaring energy bills.

And Looney tempted fate when he told an interviewer in February last year: ‘Those days where the boss was the hero… and just seemed impervious to anything… I think those days are over.’ They are for him at BP, after admitting he had not been ‘fully transparent’ in disclosing details of past personal relationships with colleagues. In doing so, he joins the likes of Tony Danker of the CBI and the former Tesco chairman John Allen, who also left their posts after being accused of crossing a zero-tolerance line in ‘workplace conduct’.

Without presuming to judge, I’m inclined to think these three cases fall some distance from the alleged sins of the latest headline-making celebrity sex pest. Yet all are subject to today’s relentless media mix of censoriousness and prurience which makes companies ever more fearful of reputational damage. If that encourages more careful collegiate behaviour but occasionally knocks strategies awry and sends shares diving – BP’s market capitalisation dropped £2 billion on Looney’s departure – so be it. While the mood lasts, every FTSE board should keep a script and a succession plan to hand for when scandal strikes.