Verity Radcliffe

Hi.

Well, the company put out a short statement that gave very broad reasons, but just the tone of the statement gave market watchers some idea that this was quite a serious issue that he'd been pulled up on.

There were quite a few frustrations when it comes to how Manifold was dealing with the business.

He was acting, some say, more as an executive chair.

He was expecting to control a lot more of what the company was doing in terms of its operations.

He was quite pushy, quite, some might say, bullying in trying to dictate what the company was trying to achieve and how they were going to go about doing it.

He was seen as this change operator, which was desperately needed by the company at the time where he came in.

But they perhaps didn't anticipate just how divisive this figure was going to be within the company.

Exactly.

That's right.

This is an ongoing issue.

They've had sort of these turbulent years since 2020 when they decided to shift over to their core business of oil and gas again.

I mean, the whole sector really has done this about face.

from talking about becoming an all-round energy company, shifting over to net zero and pushing the green agenda, to coming back around again to developing more upstream oil and gas.

For BP, it's had the most pronounced U-turn, and it's really suffered in writing its operations and putting them back on the right track.

There's been a lot of upheaval, as you say,

Holding on to chairs of the company and CEOs seems to be very difficult.

They haven't had that stability and continuity for a while now.

It's hard to tell because really they've got the same information we do, at least initially with the statement that was coming through.

And for them, they wanted more clarity over what exactly had gone on to bring about his exit.