Sunday, August 28, 2011

Tony Hayward's PEU Life


Ex-BP CEO Tony Hayward has his life back and he's on top.  Bloomberg reported:

A year after leaving BP, he’s again at the helm of a publicly traded company. He teamed up with financier Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking family, to create Vallares Plc, a shell company that raised 1.33 billion pounds ($2.15 billion) through an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange on June 17. 
Valleres Plc focuses on the oil and gas sector.  Here's the board's take:

The Directors believe that increasing global industrialisation and urbanisation, particularly in Asia (outside Japan) and the emerging markets, is likely to lead to increased global demand for commodities. At the same time, the Directors believe that the supply of oil and gas will be constrained by insufficient investment to keep pace with this demand and by exploration and development challenges. This supply-demand dynamic is likely to generate sustained inflation in commodity prices.

Hayward stated Vallares would follow the same model as Vallar, a prior Rothschild investment:

"Vallar PLC is a proven success and it is clear that the concept applies equally well in the oil and gas sector.  Many high quality international resource assets have been acquired by family owned or private companies in the last few years. We will have the cash, access to funds and the capability to unlock value where the current owners have neither the capital nor technical expertise to develop the assets."

Rothschild weighed in on landing Hayward:

"We have assembled a high quality board, with great expertise, to build a significant London listed resources company focused on the oil and gas sector. I am delighted to be partnering with Tony Hayward, whom I have known for many years, on this exciting new venture. Together, we believe the company is well positioned to capture value in a sector with attractive fundamental supply-demand dynamics."

Nathaniel Rothschild wasn't alone in giving Tony a chance to make millions.

Hayward also serves on the board of TNK-BP International Ltd., BP’s fractious Russian joint venture. Glencore International Plc, the mining and commodities-trading company that went public in London and Hong Kong in May, raising $10.3 billion, named him its senior nonexecutive director. 
Tony landed a spot on Glencore's board on April 14, 2011.  Hayward chairs Glencore's Nominations Committee.  Here's the laugher, Hayward sits on the Environment, Health and Safety Committee.  Hayward is the second-highest paid board member (non-executive), garnering nearly 160,000 pounds per year.

And Hayward advises AEA Investors LLC, a New York-based private-equity firm that manages $5 billion in investments, and Numis Securities Ltd., a London investment bank, on energy companies.

Hayward is a partner with AEA Investors LLC, according to Glencore's IPO prospectus.  The TimesUK reported:

It remains unclear as to how much Hayward will earn at the 43-year-old private equity group, which was established to manage the fortunes of the wealth of the Rockefeller, Mellon and Harriman families.

Tony Hayward, private equity underwriter (PEU) for Robber Baron money.  That's rich, given PEU's are the new Robber Barons, Schwarzman, Rubenstein and now Hayward,

Tony also sits on MIT's Energy Advisory Board and the British Olympic Advisory Board.  He is a Fellow in the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The landed gentry forgave Tony Hayward, as they forgave Lord John Browne and Wilbur Ross.  Who yachts in the Gulf of Mexico anyway? 

BP's Oil Spew antagonist Tony Hayward came out better than the Barney Fife-like protagonist Thad Allen.  However, each were handsomely rewarded after their respective roles.  It adds up to lots of PEU.

Update 10-8-11:  Hayward's Vallares did a deal with a Turkish oil company that has fields in Northern Iraq.   Lives sacrificed, Hayward's treasure:  It's a pattern.