Retreat

The press team at BP has had a busy week. Ahead of a much anticipated strategy day, word has been spread that the company is going to scrap its goal of increasing renewable energy generation 20-fold. In fact, it seems it’s going to scrap all previous targets, and the company is going list back towards digging up fossil fuels. Investors, including the itchy activists now on the roster, will likely purr with approval. Returns matter. Like a stag do that piles into a wedding reception, only to discover it’s a cash bar, new CEO Murray Auchinloss is blowing the horn: RETREAT. Despite the financial press being littered with headlines, like spent confetti at the church, the company declined to comment. It is though, part of a wider trend, a shift, a move away from the full-throttled green agenda of not-so-long-ago. Companies are struggling to navigate the cross currents of politics, public mood and profitability. Perhaps on the back of a bare-knuckled Trump administration, perhaps driven by deeper societal issues, the zeitgeist is shape-shifting. Change is afoot. BP, in riding out what the hacks lavishly label an ‘existential crisis’ is one of highest profile victims, a company that should have at it’s core a viable, prudent, long-term strategy based around, one imagines, it’s core competencies. That it’s stuffed it so deep in the bundi, speaks of a C-suite that lost its way. When Auchinloss takes to the stage and surprises no one with the latest strategic pivot, investors will decide his fate. It also won’t go un-noticed that in today’s other ‘Top Stories’, news that Tesla has started 2025 with a big drop in sales. In Europe. Times are changing.