Rehabilitation of Glencore Xstrata’s new chairman may seem remarkable given vilification in US over Gulf of Mexico disaster
In 2010, the former BP boss Tony Hayward was the most hated man in America, pilloried over the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the biggest marine oil spill in history. Four years on, the 56-year-old has become chairman of another FTSE 100 company, the commodities trading and mining group Glencore Xstrata.
Hayward, a grammar school boy from Slough, was heavily criticised for his handling of the oil spill following an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April 2010 and was forced out in July of that year (with a £1m payoff and a £10m pension pot).