Sutherland retains BP chairmanship

FORMER attorney general Peter Sutherland will serve as chairman of oil giant British Petroleum for a further three years.

It was reported yesterday that the board of BP decided to extend Mr Sutherland’s tenure at a meeting in May as it wanted him in place to find a successor to the company’s current chief executive John Browne.

When the three years are up in 2009, Mr Sutherland will have served as chairman of the company for 11 years.

The job is one of the most lucrative in the corporate world as BP is the second most profitable oil company in the world.

He was paid €575,000 in fees last year for the two-and-half-day job. However, the salary is unlikely to be the driving force behind his decision to remain in the role.

The former AG (who was also Ireland’s EU commissioner and former director-general of the World Trade Organisation) earned a fortune from his time as chairman of investment bank Goldman Sachs in Europe.

When the bank floated a few years ago, it granted all of its senior executives millions of shares. According to some estimates, Mr Sutherland is worth more than €100m.