Lord Browne, chief executive of petroleum giant BP, and one of Britain's most successful businessmen, has resigned after he was exposed as having lied about his private life.
He had been expected to stand down shortly, following shareholder dissatisfaction with his performance and a series of disasters - including an oil spill in Alaska and the tragic Texas refinery fire which resulted in 15 deaths - but what prompted Lord Browne's sudden resignation was the revelation that he lied in court about how he met his former male partner - a lie he has now acknowledged and for which he has apologised.
The way the two men met cannot be revealed, because of a ban imposed by the Court of Appeal in March. Suffice to say that they met in a perfectly legal manner, even though Lord Browne apparently found it embarrassing and did not want it to become public knowledge.
In marked contrast to the vicious homophobia directed against gay public figures in the 1980s, it was not Lord Browne's same-sex relationship that forced him to step down, nor BP's recent tarnished environmental and safety record. It was his dishonesty and his attempted cover-up that forced him out. Down and out in the City
Out in the macho world of oil
Mark Alexander
