Why pressure is mounting at BP ahead of its annual general meeting

A growing chorus of dissenting investors appear to be ramping up the pressure on BP ahead of its annual general meeting.

The Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), a top U.K. pension fund body, said late last week that it would recommend its members vote against BP Chair Albert Manifold and other board-supported resolutions at the April 23 meeting.

It follows recommendations from two influential proxy advisers, Glass Lewis and ISS, and one of Europe’s biggest asset managers, Legal & General Investment Management, for shareholders to vote against BP’s wishes.

Glass Lewis and ISS hold significant sway over how institutional investors tend to vote at AGMs and rarely advocate for voting against a firm’s board.

BP’s AGM comes while the energy major is in the process of pivoting back to its core business of oil and gas – and away from renewables – and as former Woodside Energy boss Meg O’Neill takes the reins as CEO.

Shares of the London-listed firm have soared since early April last year, when the company found itself firmly in the spotlight as a prime takeover candidate. BP has notched gains of nearly 32% so far this year, outpacing many of its U.S. and European rivals.

In a statement, LAPFF urged its members to vote against the re-election of BP’s Manifold, who only assumed his role as chair in October, reject BP’s push to retire two resolutions requiring company-specific climate reporting and oppose a resolution permitting virtual-only AGMs.

LAPFF said its recommendations came amid “serious governance concerns” and cited BP’s recent move to exclude a shareholder proposal put forward by Dutch activist group Follow This.

The motion tabled by Follow This, which has a long history of pushing for Big Oil to do more to tackle climate change, would have required BP to share its longer-term strategy under scenarios of falling oil and gas demand.

BP said its board, having taken legal advice, concluded that the proposal was not valid and would have been ineffective were it to have passed at the AGM.

In a Q&A with BP’s chair late last month, Manifold said the company would seek to retire two climate-related resolutions because the world had moved on since these were passed in 2015 and 2019 and that requirements under these BP-specific resolutions were “largely duplicative” of what the firm discloses under other industry regulations.

Referring to its plan to scrap these climate resolutions, a BP spokesperson told CNBC: “Following extensive engagement with our largest investors, we are fully focused on building a simpler, stronger and more valuable BP. That’s why we are making these recommendations, to provide transparent, standardized disclosures that support clear comparisons across companies.”

The company has also sought to make clear that retiring these resolutions does not change the firm’s net zero ambition.

Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, which is backed by European investors and represents less than 0.3% of BP shareholders, said the company had “crossed a red line” by refusing to table the group’s proposal.

“We’re just talking about value creation for shareholders. BP wants to get as little shareholder influence as possible and they call it simplification. We want transparency,” van Baal told CNBC by video call.

“What’s at stake here is, I think, larger than BP. It’s shareholder democracy that it’s at stake here,” he continued. “If BP gets away with excluding a resolution, then shareholder democracy will take a big blow because if BP can get away with it then other companies can as well.”

LAPFF said it would also support a proposal put forward by climate group ACCR, known as resolution 24, which seeks clearer disclosure on how BP evaluates the cost-competitiveness, execution risk and long-term value of its oil and gas investments.

Glass Lewis, for its part, has recommended investors support resolution 24, as well as against BP management on resolutions 23 and 4, which refer to the climate-reporting requirements introduced several years ago and the election of the chair, respectively.

ISS recommended voting against BP management on resolutions 22 (the move to virtual-only AGMs) and 23, while Legal & General Investment Management has made public its intention to vote against BP on resolutions 22, 23, 24 and 4.

BP’s Manifold has said ACCR’s proposed resolution would “pull the company in the opposite direction to where we want and need to go – which is towards simpler, standardized and comparable reporting.”

Manifold also said many other large global companies already hold virtual-only AGMs and support from the firm’s shareholders would allow BP’s board the option to do the same from time to time.