The Cash Trio

For years the most prominent public role for Peter Sutherland as chairman of BP PLC was hosting the company’s annual meeting. But after a string of oil spills, dangerous accidents and an energy-trading scandal at BP, the 60-year-old one-time rugby player has charged head first into the scrum.

Last year, the Irish politician and banker forced Chief Executive John Browne to publicly commit to his retirement date. After Lord Browne’s shock decision last month to leave a year and a half earlier than previously planned, Mr. Sutherland must now bolster BP’s image and manage the company’s first executive-suite transition in more than a decade.

Despite a persistent rise in oil prices its shares rose just 4.5 per cent in 2006, compared with a 36 per cent rise by Exxon Mobil Corp. and 15 per cent at Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Yesterday, the company announced 4th quarter net income decreased by 22 per cent, in part this can be seen as indicative of lower natural-gas prices and lower production.

BP, meanwhile, faces U.S. criminal probes on three fronts — corrosion and oil spills in Alaska; a a refinery explosion in March 2005 which claimed the lives of 15 in Texas; as well as its energy-trading practices, with federal officials alleging BP traders surreptitiously influenced propane markets in 2004. BP denies manipulating markets and says it is cooperating with investigators on all three inquiries.

Mr. Sutherland’s higher profile also underpins a pattern that goes further than BP: a shift in the boardroom dynamics at many of Europe’s biggest publicly traded companies. The criticism is often leveled that nonexecutive directors leave too much of the decision making to the executives. In recent times, many companies are moving to strengthen their boards with strong and independent directors.

Until the point at which Shell faced an accounting controversy in 2004, Shell’s British holding company had as its chairman a professor of geology. After the scandal, it hired Jorma Ollila, former chief executive officer of Nokia Corp as chairman. Unilever appointed an outside chairman last month to cap a restructuring at the Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant.

Mr. Sutherland’s mission at BP has always been to establish a “robust” and independent board of directors he was quoted as saying in an interview recently. After short periods as Ireland’s attorney general and Europe’s competition czar, Peter Sutherland in 1993 was instrumental in taking forward the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in Geneva. There, he clinched the Uruguay Round, an important trade agreement that set the stage for today’s World Trade Organization. For a man who has achieved so much it is difficult to forsee where he will find his next challenge.