Bob Malone knew he had made a mistake when Lord Browne’s reading glasses dropped to the end of his nose. The chief executive of BP fixed his gaze on the man he had just promoted to head the energy company’s shipping operations, then spent several minutes chastising his underling over his inclusion of a slide on BP shipping’s financial health during a business review.

“I told you your job is to operate safely and environmentally responsibly our fleet,” Mr Malone recalls being told. “Don’t ever come into the room with financials,” Lord Browne went on.