Anyone with any news / rumors please spill the tea!
14 replies (most recent on top)
@cng Could you please explain a bit more? What exactly happened? And who at Castrol is currently affected by layoffs?
They brought in armed security today as layoffs begin. Have been a Castrol/BP employee for many, many years. Never saw that before.
You nominate whoever makes your life easier as LM not necessarily what is good for Castrol/equity holders. I mean come on guys, Castrol is Sales (how much did it grow recently, profitable growth not volume BS), GSC (wanting big pats on the back when they ....drumroll.... procure at market prices), Technology (formulation guys who want the rolls royce of material to produce sub market leading end products) and then a he-l lot of admin in operations and bean counters in finance....Who is that irreplacable from an owner perspective? For goodness sake, it is a company that sends expats out to the States and Singapore; locations globally recognised to have top talent and more hardworking folks than Europeans...
Which questions content of these two lists, but not their existence
@np this would make good sense if I hadn't just watched good people get laid off, and plodders retained.
I think it is relatively straightforward. Even if you might have only one to three years, you'll try to do anything in your power to reverse this, and to do that you need specific people; you don't want these people to leave -> retention.
The amount of money to do this is relatively small.
As for people staying, in my area—technology—I just observed around seven or eight good people resigning in the last four weeks, even though they were placed. Those were high performers, obviously. I would say if your team can relatively easily find a new and, to some extent, better job, it is a proxy for you having a good team.
To that extent, I myself have an offer now and have a couple of weeks to decide.
Perhaps it is tech, that tends to be quite competitive, but even for other areas, similar logic applies.
@kv , although my past experience is same as yours I won't believe that is the case this time necessarily. The corporate (both Castrol and its mother co, bp PLC) is far more stretched financially than what most believe it to be. Retention doesn't matter if the whole viability of the company is in question next 1-3 years.
There were a lot of previous high performers who moved to hydrogen, renewables and the related stuff in 2020-21. Some were the top stars of entire bp PLC - don't think anyone is necessarily safe because of their previous track records, loyalty or so-called "sponsorship" unless you are at the EVP level or so.
Happy to be challenged if you hear differently, that's my observation from non-castrol standpoint.
@kv I am not sure I agree on this in Castrol/BP's case, and I worked on my fair share of M&A transactions over the last 2 decades....
The matter of fact is the culture of the company is to stay on until one gets a redundancy payment or reach retirement age, meaning regardless of how good the market is, for those with long enough service staying on is more financially viable than alternatives, unless one is a GL (Castrol LT) where it is not unusual to be compensated for forfeited share options but very unlikely for SLLs....so in a true BP/Castrol manner there is more lubrication going around the system unnecessarily but folks advocate for it because it is reciprocal in obvious manner....after all this is a company, that if press reports are anything to go by has only mid tier PE firms as potential suitors despite the fun fare only 3 months ago, so push your boss for where do you stand on the list and adjust your strategy accordingly.....
Every layoff at every company I saw, there was a list of people who would receive retention bonuses or shares, whatever.
Because guess what?
There are people you don't have work for or don't need, and there are people you don't want to lose.
Usually, people you don't want to lose are the ones who can find another job relatively easily and as soon as there is a scent of coming layoff, they will start looking for a new job more actively. Thus - retention.
There is always a discussion about who needs to be on the first list and who on the second. But that the second list comes if there is a first - a completely reasonable thing.
@jy go on......
Retention share options have been granted to some folks too....
yes, the money is getting wasted.
@ax the proceeds are to pay down some debt aren't they?
bP will divest castrol at a fire sale price and then squander the proceeds