With any massive international corporation the answer is usually “they are multitude and they are one.” They know how to set it up so they can reap all the benefits of being big and international while isolating each constituent piece enough that its liabilities or mismanagement shouldn’t (in theory) be able to bring down the whole beast.
Anything like this happens of course and entire legions of lawyers become involved and it is anyone’s guess how the dice fall.
Sorry, but I don’t draw the line in the same place that you do.
If the same people (“the Board”) is in control of a company with employees in multiple countries, and the company fucks up like BP did, then they all get to pay the price, in some fashion. I see no reason to mollycoddle a guy in the UK if his company fucks up in the US, for instance. He made a conscious decision to work for that company, and he was perfectly willing to take the rewards when the company wasn’t fucking up, right? I mean, he made a salary, maybe some bonuses, etc. during the good times and I can’t see any reason for his future employment to be my concern after his company fucks up and has to be punished.
Would you argue that a thief should not be jailed so that his family won’t suffer?
Smart move. If BP is destroyed a TON of jobs would be lost. You’ll charge $4,300 a barrel and pay back tens of thousands per person for YEARS of unemployment claims and welfare benefits. Most likely you will lose more than you gained.
sigh
Whichever way you spin it, the vast majority of employees and investors in BP have no responsibility for this disaster.
Now, I agree with you that they share some of the liability however, and should pay out / help clean up / help change business practices (delete as appropriate).
But implying that everyone should lose their jobs, lose all of their investments, sound punitive to me, and what exactly are these people being punished for?
We can draw lines wherever we want. I was talking about how things actually are, as in “how the people that actually get to make decisions about these things” are legally bound to draw lines.
They also now have an “asset disposal unit” (I hope I am getting the verbiage right). They are already selling off parts of themselves to cover their expenses.
Bolding mine.
There aren’t going to be thousands of unemployed. Currently active operations would simply change hands. Joe Rig Worker in Australia or the US would (I suspect in most cases anyway) continue on with their work as before, simply under different management. Does that guy in New Zealand really care whether he is drilling for Shell or BP’s profit? If you asked him which company, in his opinion, enjoys a better image in his mind, wouldn’t you expect most to prefer Shell? I think so. The biggest change you would notice in a lot of places would be an increase in job satisfaction among the workers.
The people who would be ‘punished’ the most by BP p.l.c.'s downfall would be stockholders. Consider however, the last time I checked anyway, questions like this were decided on a market basis. I scoured my records for any hint of a guarantee of profit on the stocks I own, but all I found was the cryptic phrase, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”. If we act to protect all these poor stockholders by preventing their losses, wouldn’t that make us corporate communists? I thought our system was a capitalist one and not corporate communism, but I suppose I’d have to ask a financial planner to be sure.
My question hinges on following the law (and not the OP’s emotions) where it may go, calculating the potential damages, and considering if those damages might exceed BP p.l.c.'s ability to pay and cause them to go bankrupt, to get bought out by a cabal of billionaires, or by some other mechanism fall apart or what-have-you.
I suppose on a global scale it could be disruptive, but clearly this company is already wildly disruptive, literally on a global scale. A disaster like theirs’ can never happen again. Not in Nigeria, not in North Korea, not anywhere, ever again. If holding BP p.l.c. accountable for its’ actions causes it to fold, so be it. Let the other oil companies see the result. It means that the price of oil must necessarily rise to ensure acceptable standards. Don’t like it? Neither do I, but that’s capitalism for you. If you want to broadcast the grievances all the stockholder-victims in this tragedy, maybe we can arrange to have BP p.l.c. hung from a cross and you can weep some corporate communist tears over it. We’ll send the photos to BP p.l.c. headquarters.
It is indeed oversimplistic to imagine that all BP’s employees would become unemployed if the company went under.
But it’s also oversimplistic to imagine that all such jobs will simply change hands overnight.
I have some experience here: I was working for a company that got bought out, and I was made redundant when the (profitable) project that I worked on was canned.
This kind of thing often happens with acquisitions, where even buying the core business involves significant financial risk.
BP is a pretty big fish to swallow. Whoever buys it will probably do some trimming, and then consider resuming certain projects at a future date.
And there is no guarantee that companies like Shell would be interested in keeping the infrastructure of BP America (IOW, all the jobs that don’t necessarily have to be in the US).
Isn’t Shell partly British too? Or does the OPs hatred only stretch to BP these days?
I didn’t say they would simply change hands overnight. I said it would be disruptive.
If you think that’s callous, check out Gen. William Westmoreland claiming that ‘life isn’t important’! (his speech starts at 1:33 in the clip)
I have trouble with the scale of things in these questions. The disaster is vast; BP is also very big. I need a handy mnemonic for measuring them.
I don’t like these arguments where the focus is on what is lost if BP p.l.c. is destroyed. These always seem to lose sight of what has been lost by maintaining BP p.l.c. This company has killed literally dozens of Americans, and had already been fined billions of dollars for violations prior to the DWH disaster. Now AFAIK they are defendants in the largest lawsuit in history- $40+ billion, open ended. They destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, and they did it in the midst of a sweetheart deal with the US government. I bet an action like this will make the kind of waves that costs some jobs. But I don’t see how turbulence can be avoided without abandoning Justice altogether.
Short form:
Full name is Royal Dutch Shell.
THe Royal Dutch comes from a Dutch company. The Shell comes from a British company.
Look Try2B - another company for you to hate!
Hmpf.
Does it come down to ‘Britishness’ or disastrous results?
I doubt Shell’s saintliness, but then again I can’t recall the last Shell catastrophe. See what I mean?
Done.
Google “Shell Nigeria Oil Spill”, but then why would you care, not your back yard, not your hobby horse.
Oh, is that the source of it? I did wonder how such extreme prejudice could spontaneously arise.
And you can bet that if an American Petrol company wrecked a couple of tankers on the Great Barrier reef, permanently and irrevocably destroying it (and thus the economy of most of North-East Australia), he’d probably be up in arms laying into anyone who dared to suggest that American Petroleum PLC should be completely erased from existence, and everyone even tangentially involved with them should lose their jobs and everything they own up to and including the clothes on their backs.
Of course, I don’t think many sensible people would actually want to go that far, but I must say the OP is the first person I’ve come across with what feels like a personal grudge (as opposed to a general issue) against a petrol company.
I see. We’re all lending a hand to help Villa do better.
Ok. It isn’t like being cheated on AFAIK. It is as if a Brit I’d known for years spontaneously murdered my mother over something to do with money in her purse. The Brit thing turns out to be incidental and I’ve tried to avoid that aspect of things in this thread. Point is, the situation is lastingly upsetting.
Neat. Tell us some more of what I think. Reductio ad absurdums are pretty funny 
I’ve realized lately that I view the area as my personal land. Yes, not property whose deed I own. Just mine. When it gets wrecked, it turns out I react personally. Yes yes, some detachment would come in handy, I know. But I feel personally insulted by BP p.l.c., among other complaints.
Ouch. That stings.
If I didn’t know better I’d think you were building the case that British oil companies behave like adolescent juggernauts.
Any company that does the kind of damage that BP or Shell or Exxon did, should be held fully accountable for what they do.
But what often complicates the problem is
the fact that various Governments are involved, too. Either they’re funding part of the oil project or they are aware of safety and environmental violations and are looking away while giving said company tax breaks (making them an accessory to the crime). So when hell breaks loose the taxpayers will also be on the hook.
the people of said countries which buy the oil benefit from lower oil prices as a result of oil companies cutting corners and potentially causing a Nigeria, Valdez or Gulf Coast disaster. (By a stretch of reasoning) that makes the citizens accessories, too.
There are thousands of workers who stand to lose their jobs when a disaster hits and their employer is held liable.
So, is it not logical then that the full liability for clean-up and restitution of economic damages be paid by not only the corporation but the citizens they sell oil to as well as the Governments who assist them?