BP shareholders kept up the pressure on the company's board today with a sizeable protest vote over the pay deals handed to the company's top bosses.
BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg revealed that just over 11% of votes cast by shareholders not present at today's meeting, which also faced angry protests from environmentalists, were against the remuneration report.
Some 25% of shareholder votes also opposed the re-election of Sir William Castell, a senior independent director, who oversaw the appointment of Mr Svanberg as chairman and Tony Hayward as chief executive.
The pay-outs, which were deemed 'wholly unacceptable' by a lobby group, included a £380,000 annual bonus for chief financial officer Byron Grote and a £310,000 bonus for Iain Conn, chief executive of refining and marketing.
While Mr Hayward, who presided over the company at the height of the Deepwater Horizon crisis, did not receive an annual bonus for 2010, he and former head of exploration Andy Inglis could potentially earn up to £8m and £6m respectively from vested performance shares, which relate partly to the period in which the disaster occurred. Chief executive Bob Dudley did not receive a bonus for last year.
Today's meeting took place almost a year since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and caused nearly five million barrels of oil to gush into the sea.
Around 100 protesters turned up to display their anger at BP's actions, ranging from the Gulf of Mexico fishermen to representatives of indigenous communities angry at BP's involvement in tar sands extraction in northern Canada. Some were refused entry to the meeting despite being shareholders.
BP has tried to move on from the disaster after agreeing to share responsibility with the owners of the stricken rig and is selling $30 billion of assets to help pay the clean-up bill and compensate fisherman.
BP's fortunes were ravaged by the spill, widely acknowledged to be the worst environmental catastrophe in US history. Billions of dollars were knocked off the company's value as oil spewed for 87 days before the well was capped.
Hundreds of miles of fragile coastal wetlands and beaches were contaminated, a third of the Gulf's rich US waters were closed to fishing, and the economic costs have reached into the tens of billions of dollars.
BP reported its first annual loss in almost two decades as a result of the disaster and its share price remains 30% below its level before the spill. The oil giant's fortunes are instrumental to the fortunes of millions of British investors because most British pension funds invest in the company.
