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Commentators reflect on the implications of the BP oil spill for British pensions, multinational companies and the Obama presidency.

on BP's involvement in British pensions and anticipates an increase in shareholder power:

"The average pension fund member is not an expert on finance, oil extraction or fund management. The system here, as in the US, relies on large shareholders to police boardroom behaviour and risk-taking. We now know how utterly they have failed in that duty. Most institutions are strangely timid about confrontations with company managements, despite the billions of pounds under their control."

pensions no longer linked to companies like BP:

"Pensions funds shouldn't be investing in BP plc. They should be investing in UK plc. And West Midlands plc in particular.
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"That takes a fundamental restructuring of banking and economic outlook which I think neither the Office of Fiscal Responsibility nor the Future of Banking Commission gets, because of their London-centric outlook."

that "the tide has shifted with respect to how much thought mainstream investors are giving to environmental, social, and corporate governance":

"Reversals of fortune of this magnitude aren't as rare as we sometimes think. Recall how the tobacco giants wound up ceding enormous, profit-generating power to the U.S. government and how asbestos lawsuits forced such major industrial outfits as Johns-Manville into bankruptcy.
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"The common denominator linking BP with these companies is growing clear: They all failed to anticipate risks that could threaten their business foundations."

that "British complaints that BP is being 'scapegoated' will not help reason to prevail":

"A US media frenzy is a disgusting thing to watch. Even so, in all this I have no sympathy for either BP or for those in Britain - such as Boris Johnson, London's mayor - who are complaining about a surge in anti-British rhetoric. That kind of whining does not play well in the US. If you want a real backlash against the UK, keep that up.
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"Imagine that Exxon Mobil had spent weeks dumping 30,000 barrels of oil a day (the newest estimate, double the previous one: seven Exxon Valdez spills so far and counting) on the British shoreline, with no end yet in sight."

argues that the spill is "a test of President Obama's vision of government":

"He should have moved a lot faster to begin political and criminal investigations of the spill. If BP was withholding information, failing to cooperate or not providing the ships needed to process the oil now flowing to the surface, he should have told the American people and the world."

that President Obama's priority is to convince the nation that he is on top of the situation:

"[Mr Obama] is right that the technical expertise, as well as the financial responsibility, for plugging the leak and cleaning the mess, is all BP's, not that of the government.
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"But the American public expects the White House to demonstrate control of the situation, and now polls put the government's response to the disaster as worse than the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, a failure from which Mr Obama's predecessor never recovered.
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"Even the president's friends have moved from expressing understanding and sympathy to outright criticism".

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