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BP could cut dividends to shareholders | Marketplace From American Public Media
Obama gets British backlash
As BP investors hang in the balance, there are signs the British business and political communities are rallying to support the battered oil company. This week, President Obama told a Today Show television audience he's figuring out who to call out on the Gulf Oil spill. But the public may be growing resentful of Obama's protests.
"There is a feeling that perhaps because of Obama's quite precarious position himself on this issue that he's using BP as a bit of a scapegoat," says Caroline Bain of the Economist Intelligence Unit. London Mayor Boris Johnson has gone as far as to call Obama "anti-British", while another politician accused Obama of "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance."
Meanwhile, Obama has suggested he would have fired BP CEO Tony Hayward, and that BP should put off its dividend payments to investors. That could be a hard sell in a country where where many people rely on BP stock in their retirement plans.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday his government might be willing to help BP in some way, and his top economic minister reinforced BP's economic value. Cameron will be contacint Obama over the phone this weekend.
BP could cut dividends to shareholders | Marketplace From American Public Media
Obama gets British backlash
As BP investors hang in the balance, there are signs the British business and political communities are rallying to support the battered oil company. This week, President Obama told a Today Show television audience he's figuring out who to call out on the Gulf Oil spill. But the public may be growing resentful of Obama's protests.
"There is a feeling that perhaps because of Obama's quite precarious position himself on this issue that he's using BP as a bit of a scapegoat," says Caroline Bain of the Economist Intelligence Unit. London Mayor Boris Johnson has gone as far as to call Obama "anti-British", while another politician accused Obama of "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance."
Meanwhile, Obama has suggested he would have fired BP CEO Tony Hayward, and that BP should put off its dividend payments to investors. That could be a hard sell in a country where where many people rely on BP stock in their retirement plans.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday his government might be willing to help BP in some way, and his top economic minister reinforced BP's economic value. Cameron will be contacint Obama over the phone this weekend.
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