BP chief executive Tony Hayward said in an interview published yesterday his firm was considering cutting its dividend amid growing US public anger at its handling of a devastating oil spill.
The BP board of directors may consider cutting or deferring its second-quarter dividend — due to be announced on July 27 — or even issuing dividend payments as scrip, effectively a means of delaying payment to shareholders, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“We are considering all options on the dividend, but no decision has been made,” Hayward told the Journal.
US President Barack Obama and lawmakers have turned their sights in recent days on the regular BP dividend, a lucrative source of income for many US and British pension funds, even as the firm’s shares slumped to half their value and it faced a multibillion-dollar bill for cleanup operations.
“The administration keeps pushing the boundaries on what we are responsible for,” a BP executive told the newspaper after US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he would demand that the firm also pay for the lost wages of oil workers who were rendered idle by the massive slick.
“This demand is chilling,” the executive said.
Reports that the US Department of Justice is weighing action to make sure BP can pay any spill-related claims while looking into the firm’s dividend payment plans sent further shudders through company executives.
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