Thursday, June 10, 2010

BP Offering to Suspend Dividend if US Politicians are Nice to BP

There is a stir brewing across the pond about the American anger towards the UK headquartered, multi-national company BP, and about the BP stock plunge due to the oil disaster.

MailOnline

BP offers dividend olive branch to U.S.

By Sam Fleming
Last updated at 10:18 PM on 10th June 2010

"BP is seeking a deal with the White House under which it would sacrifice its dividend in return for a calming of the political hysteria over the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Chief executive Tony Hayward will proffer the olive branch in meetings over the coming days in the hope of quelling the increasingly vicious invective in Washington.

Options include scrapping the payout for one quarter or until the Macondo well is capped; putting the payment in 'escrow' - i.e. deferring it - until BP's liabilities are clearer; or paying it in shares rather than cash."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1285689/BP-offers-dividend-olive-branch-U-S.html#ixzz0qVU7vc44

Time for Mr Cameron to speak up for BP

By Daily Mail Comment
Last updated at 1:43 AM on 11th June 2010

Excerpts:

"One thing is sure: the President's campaign is now threatening the very future of BP, whose share price has virtually halved - opening it to the possibility of a takeover from rivals, including the state-funded Chinese oil giant.

It is hard to overstate the significance of BP to the British economy.

It employs over 10,000 people here, its overseas revenues support our balance of payments and it generates nearly £6billion a year in taxes.

Its shares are owned - directly or through pension funds - by 18million Britons, and its dividends amount to £1 in every £7 paid by British firms.

Mr Obama's attacks, coming from a President who had put deepwater drilling for oil at the heart of his energy policy only weeks before the disaster, are rank hypocrisy.

And they don't sit well from a nation whose own response after U.S. firm Union Carbide was implicated in the deaths of 20,000 Indians in Bhopal was to protect American interests - and citizens - at all costs."

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