LONDON, April 22, 2026, 13:12 (BST)
- BP Chair Albert Manifold has support from at least three top shareholders before Thursday’s annual meeting, according to a Bloomberg report carried by the Irish Times.
- Legal & General, Glass Lewis and a UK pension fund forum have lined up against parts of BP’s board position over climate disclosure and governance.
- The vote lands before BP’s April 28 first-quarter results, after the company flagged strong oil trading but a rise in net debt.
BP PLC Chair Albert Manifold is set to enter Thursday’s annual meeting with support from at least three of the company’s top shareholders, a boost for the board before a vote that has become a test of investor trust.
The timing matters. It is the first annual general meeting for Manifold as chair and for Chief Executive Meg O’Neill, and it comes as BP tries to steady strategy after several years of weak relative performance, management churn and pressure from activist investor Elliott Management. BP says the meeting will start at 11 a.m. BST on April 23 at its International Centre for Business and Technology.
It also comes one week before results. BP has already told investors to expect an “exceptional” first-quarter oil trading result, while warning that net debt would rise to $25 billion to $27 billion from $22.2 billion at the end of 2025 because of a working-capital build, meaning more cash tied up in day-to-day operations as prices swing. Reuters
Norway’s $2.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund said it would vote for Manifold and other board-backed resolutions. Bloomberg reported, through the Irish Times, that two other major shareholders also plan to back him, citing people with direct knowledge of the plans.
The support does not remove the sting from the meeting. Legal & General Group has said it will vote against Manifold, while Glass Lewis has recommended investors do the same after BP refused to put a climate-related proposal from Follow This on the ballot. The Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, whose members represent about 1.34% of BP shares, has also urged opposition to the chair and several board resolutions.
BP’s board says it took legal advice and concluded the Follow This proposal was invalid and would be ineffective if passed. A BP spokesperson also said the company remained focused on building a “simpler, stronger and more valuable BP” and that planned reporting changes would give investors more standardised disclosures for comparison across companies. The Irish Times
The investor dispute is partly about control of the transition story. ACCR, an activist shareholder group, wants more disclosure on how BP’s capital allocation — how it decides where to spend money — supports shareholder value as the company shifts spending back toward oil and gas. Brynn O’Brien, ACCR’s co-chief executive, said NBIM’s support for management was “out of step” with investors seeking long-term value. Reuters
O’Neill has moved fast. She told staff BP intends to return to a clearer upstream-and-downstream model, with upstream meaning oil and gas production and downstream covering refining, fuels and retail. The move unwinds part of the structure built under BP’s earlier low-carbon push; O’Neill called the goal a “simpler, stronger, more valuable BP.” The Guardian
Shell gives BP’s critics an easy comparison. Shell has agreed to put a similar Follow This resolution to a shareholder vote at its own annual meeting, while recommending investors reject it. BP excluded the proposal altogether, saying it was invalid.
The market backdrop is helping Manifold and O’Neill. Reuters reported that BP, Shell and TotalEnergies’ trading desks made at least $2.5 billion in the first quarter from energy price volatility tied to the Iran war, while Exxon did not flag the same kind of trading gains. David Hewitt, senior consultant at Hewitt Energy Perspectives, said BP is “not given to hyperbole,” making its use of “exceptional” notable. Reuters
UBS analyst Joshua Stone wrote that O’Neill takes over at a “critical turning point” for BP. Higher-for-longer oil prices help the stock, he wrote, but there is “still work” to regain investor confidence. The Irish Times
But the downside for BP is clear. Even if Manifold is re-elected, a large protest vote could keep governance concerns alive and complicate the board’s effort to retire older climate-reporting resolutions; Reuters reported that BP needs 75% support to scrap those measures, which were approved by shareholders in 2019 and 2025.
Investors will now get two signals in quick order: the AGM vote on Thursday and first-quarter numbers on April 28. The first shows how much patience shareholders still have. The second will show whether volatile markets gave BP enough of a trading windfall to offset the higher debt and the continuing argument over strategy.
