I don’t think they don’t need to vote out the leadership to do that. I’m not certain what British law on this is today, but I’m pretty sure shareholders can still bring derivative suits against the officers and Board on behalf of the corporation.
From what I can tell, though, it would be a hard case to make under British law (and probable under the law of any US state as well) that the officers and directors breached their fiduciary duty here. You have something called the Business Judgment Rule in the US, and by statute in the UK, directors have a duty to “promote the success of the company”, while having regard for “the impact of the company’s operations on the community and the environment,
(e)the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct.”
While I agree that BP’s management didn’t act in their shareholders’ best interests here, it will be very hard to sue them for it.
For waht it’s worth, I agree with you, and think that BP did in fact act in a way they thought best for their shareholders. I was just pointing out that, while Obama’s actions are unseemly and unbecoming the leader of the most powerful, best country in the world (and much more that like a 3rd-world tinpot dictator), that the shareholders still had rights they could attempt to exercise.
And what I mean by that is, BP essentially got Obama to “force” them to turn over the responsibility for handling claims to a 3rd party.
Now, when a claim is disallowed, BP gets no blame for it. There were certainly going to be claims disallowed, and each one was going to get big press time, and even if the claims were false, BP was going to suffer.
Now there’s a 3rd party that will feel obligation to prove they are doing their job by rejecting claims, and when they do, the victims will have to rant about Obama and the government, not BP.