Eh?

I understand that WSC as First Lord of the Admiralty arranged for the admiralty to acquire 52.5% of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (Anglo-Iranian in 1935 and BP in 1954) from Burmah Oil in 1913 to safeguard bunker oil supplies for the RN. Since HMG had a controlling interest there was no need to take the whole company into public ownership.

From the BP and Castrol Archive at Warwick University http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/bparchive/tag/bp_faqs/

*Tell me about the British Government Shareholding in BP . . .*
The prospectus for a new company called Anglo-Persian Oil Co Ltd , with a capital of 1 million £1 ordinary shares and 1 million £1 6% preference shares, was issued on the 19th April 1909. Thus the company was first floated on the stock exchange on this date.

The British Government was a significant shareholder in the Company from 1914 to 1987. Shortly before 1914 BP was contracted to supply the Admiralty with fuel oil and the British Government injected £2 million of new capital into the company to ensure its continuing existence. This meant that it held £2m out of £3m ordinary shares and from 1919 to 1922 increasing to £5m out of £7.5m. The principle being that although the Government held the majority shares and could appoint two directors to the board of Anglo-Persian Oil Co Ltd it would not interfere with the company’s normal commercial operations. The government had an interest in the company because it “was dealing with a strategic commodity which was of great importance to the defence of the realm.” Therefore the company was perceived to be semi-nationalised (as an arm of the British Government).

In 1967, when BP bought Distillers’ chemical interests (partly with £61m worth of BP shares), it had the side effect of reducing the British Governments shareholding from 51.6% to 48.9%, the Government only requesting first refusal (which it did not use) on Distillers’ BP shares. Thus the Labour Government acquiesced in what was effectively de-nationalisation. By 1970 the Governments shareholding was decreased further to 48.6%.

In June 1977 the Government put up the first of its BP Shares for sale (66 million). The second share sale on the 15th October 1987 sold off most of the remaining 32% British Government shareholding. After the 1987 sale, the Government retained a 1.8% shareholding “to provide bonus shares for small investors who held on to their BP shares. However, the stock market crash that October deterred most small investors from participating in the offering”. On 5th December 1995 the Government raised more than £500m from the sale of this remaining 1.8% stake.

This effectively finished the long relationship with the Government (they no longer had the right to have two directors on the board) and BP was now seen as a private company.

“…those who spent their youth in admiration of commuist dictatorships ..”

Heh. You make it sound as though they’ve sensibly grown out of that admiration now…