Lord Browne : BBC World interview

Jun 23, 2014 • Lord John Browne sits down with BBC World to discuss his new book, "The Glass Closet".

Lord Browne: Coming Out of the Glass Closet

Jun 27, 2014 • Lord John Browne, former BP CEO, explains why business would benefit if it was more welcoming of openly gay employees.

The Glass Closet | Lord John Browne | Talks at Google

Mar 18, 2015 • Arjan Dijk joins Lord Browne, former BP CEO and author of The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good Business for a fireside chat on October 30, 2014.

Lord Browne spent his entire career at BP and served as CEO from 1995 to 2007, transforming it from a medium-sized oil company to a “supermajor”. He resigned when a former boyfriend sold a story to a tabloid newspaper, pulling Lord Browne very publicly out of the closet. He is now the author of The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good for Business, a commentary on LGBT inclusion in the corporate world and the steps companies need to take so that employees feel able to bring their whole selves to work. I met Lord Browne some months ago in London and really think that he has very interesting perspectives and experience (and his book draws from very similar research that Sheryl Sandberg used in her "Lean-In" book).

During the hour long discussion, we’ll have a candid conversation around inclusion and diversity in the workplace. We’ll save the second half of the session for Q&A from the audience.

Lord John Browne | BBC Breakfast Interview | 2014

Lord John Browne talks to the BBC about his new book, "The Glass Closet".

Gay Soap Opera

Photo of Reinaldo Avila da Silva courtesy of THE DAILY MAIL

THIS IS LONDON: Former BP chief executive Lord Browne has struck up a 'close friendship' with Peter Mandelson's partner, Brazilian Reinaldo Avila da Silva, it has been revealed.

The peer, who was forced to resign from the oil giant last month after lying to a court about his relationship with rent boy Jeff Chevalier, has socialised a deux with Reinaldo.

The disclosure of the close links between multi-millionaire Lord Browne and Reinaldo follows reports that 53-year-old Mr Mandelson has become close to Italian fashion designer Marco Coretti.

A well-placed source, who is in contact with both Lord Browne, 59, and Reinaldo, who is 25 years his junior, said: "Reinaldo has seen John a couple of times. They are close friends and know each other well." Mandelson’s Partner Linked with Lord Browne (more)

Mark Alexander

Endemic Corruption at the Top in Business and Politics, and the Unfairness of the System
Never in the history of the world has so much been earned by so few; and never in the history of the world has there been so much corruption.

Nowadays, we hear about corruption at the top all the time; indeed, almost on a daily basis, we hear some new titbit about the goings on of this CEO or that, or this politician or that. Political appointments are handed out based on nepotism and cronyism. Fat salaries are paid to people who have little experience, and sometimes even little understanding, of the positions to which they have been appointed.

We hear about this sort of thing all the time: one day it’s the slush fund that BAE is alleged to have set up, the next, it’s the enormous salary raise awarded to one’s fancy woman, yet another, we hear about the extraordinarily extravagant lifestyle of the gay head of Head of British Petroleum (BP), Lord John Browne, the socialist peer, who, it has been alleged, ran that oil company as though it had been his private enterprise, and who financed an extravagant gay lifestyle beyond any normal person’s wildest dreams: private jets to take the gay couple to the place or country of their whim and choosing; three-thousand-pound bottles of claret for lunches; trips to the Salzburg festivals; and so on and so forth. All, of course, on company expenses. Lord John Browne took the term ’gay lifestyle’ and gave it its full meaning! Pity he didn’t think of giving the term its full meaning out of his own pocket. Indeed, so gay was his lifestyle that his gay French-Canadian lover, Jeff Chevalier, couldn’t keep up with Lord Browne and is said to have had to go into therapy!

The evidence coming to light about the goings on at the World Bank apropos of the shenanigans of Paul Wolfowitz paints a depressing picture of corruption at the very top, in places one would hope would be corruption-free. Fat salary increases to one’s bed partner should surely be left to one's colleagues to decide; further, where such vested interests lie, they should be handed out by those other people on the basis of merit, and merit alone.

Then we have all those millions which are said to have been laundered in Switzerland to pay members of the royal family of Saudi Arabia in return for contracts and extensions of contracts pertaining to the Al-Yamamah contract which Mrs Thatcher initiated many years ago. It was a very large contract even then; now it is colossal. Funny that the name of the contract - Al-Yamamah- has such a whiter than white name; for in Arabic, the name means ‘the dove’. Doves, as we all know, have such a pure, often white, connotation. There seems to be little white and pure about the goings on behind the scenes between BAE and the Saudi government. Anyone would think that those already fabulously wealthy Saudi princes needed even more money!

The funny thing is that there are hundreds and hundreds (maybe even thousands and thousands) of ex-employees of BAE who have been treated shabbily. BAE is famous for its bad treatment of any employee who happens to fall foul of their autocratic management style. How many innocent ex-employees of BAE have had their careers washed up because of BAE, I wonder? How many lives has BAE destroyed? How many sacrificial lambs have there been since the inception of this so-called Al-Yamamah contract? One can only hazard a guess.

Then we have the Bush-Saudi connection. The relationship between these two parties seems most unhealthy to me and to many I know. Bush keeps harping on about terrorism and the need to win the war against it. Have you noticed, though, that he avoids calling that same terrorism by its proper name: Islamic terrorism? One can only wonder why.

The sad thing about the ‘war on terror’ is that Bush is all for beating it on the one hand, but on the other is allowing the Saudis to pump untold millions, nay billions, into the US to finance the propagation of Wahhabi Islam, known to be the most pernicious brand of Islam around. On this score, Bush speaks with bifurcated tongue. So Islam-friendly have his policies been over the time he has been in office that Islam has grown in the States like never before. Doesn’t the president realise that Islam is out to destroy the US constitution? Does he not realise that Islam and democracy are totally and utterly incompatible? Does he not realise that Islam is as much a political system as it is a religious one? Can Mr Bush really be that naïve? Or is there something else going on behind the scenes which we, the ordinary people, just don’t get to hear about?

Then we have the vast inequalities of wealth created here in the United Kingdom by no less than a so-called socialist government under Tony Blair’s watch. It has recently been reported that the top echelons of society have seen their riches increase threefold in the past decade! And they call that socialism! That’s ‘Champagne socialism’ if ever I saw it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am no friend of socialism. Socialism is one of the worst forms of government ever dreamed up by any political thinkers. But nor am I in favour of a form of unbridled capitalism which treats people unfairly. It cannot be right for foreigners to be allowed to come to this country and not be taxed on their earnings from abroad, when ordinary people, you the voters, have to be taxed on any small amount of money you might be able to earn from that self-same source.

In London, there are many who have to slave away for a full week for as little as £400, and often less, whereas there are the fat cats who earn upwards of £46,000 in that very same week!

If the corruption I have referred to is allowed to continue, then we should not be surprised if one of these days the people will turn on the people who govern them. Nor should we be surprised if the pendulum will swing in the favour of socialism in the years to come. Even the very best of parties come to an end, sometime. Our politicians should be aware that people’s tolerance is not infinite. It used to be said that poverty was the breeding ground of communism. In those days, they were speaking of absolute poverty, of course. But I should like to add that relative poverty could also one day become the breeding ground of communism. We should all be aware that this is a distinct possibility. Fairness still counts for something. No sensible person wants to live in a political system that treats the rich differently from the poor. Any country that legislates so much in favour of the rich at the expense of the poor is heading for political turmoil. Those odious systems of government – socialism and communism – are not dead; they are simply lying dormant. And in some countries, most notably in Venezuela, we can see extreme socialism beginning to raise its ugly head even as I write this.

Capitalism is by far the best political system around; though it is far from perfect. The greatest weakness in capitalism is that it plays to man’s greedy nature. In years gone by, this wasn’t such a problem, since in years gone by, the influence of the Church and Christianity were far greater: they acted as a counterbalance to man’s greed, and checked people’s lack of principle, thereby keeping corruption, nepotism, and cronyism in check. Alas, in today’s increasingly secular world, there are few such checks and balances. The Western capitalist world has become a ‘free for all’: you take what you can, when you can.

Corruption, nepotism, cronyism, unbridled greed – these are the sad realities of life in the twenty-first century.

©Mark Alexander

The Excesses of Lord John Browne and Why Your Petrol Costs So Much!

Photo of Lord John Browne courtesy of Google Images

THE MAIL ON SUNDAY: At the time it all seemed too much - too plainly far-fetched - for Jeff Chevalier to take in. But here he was, a 25-year-old once-penniless Canadian male prostitute, sitting down to dinner with the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

And the two men were liberally helping themselves from a £3,000 bottle of claret.

The wine was the personal choice of Lord Browne of Madingley - the boss of British Petroleum, Britain's most senior businessman and host of the dinner party in question.

"Mr Blair didn't know what it was but he absolutely loved it," Mr Chevalier recalls. "It was a 1983 French claret."

Lord Browne had originally met Mr Chevalier through a male escort agency; now the pair were partners.

The tycoon had installed the young Canadian in his £5million Chelsea apartment and was showing him off to the cream of London society.

The cosy dinner for Tony Blair in the summer of 2005 came amid a seemingly endless merry-go-round of dinners, lunches, soirees and parties that Mr Chevalier was summoned to by his tycoon lover, 34 years his senior.

He was flaunted before business and political contacts, diplomats and artists; there were holidays in private compounds in Barbados and opera in Salzburg and Venice (enjoyed alongside Prince and Princess Michael of Kent in their private box).

In Venice, Mr Chevalier would find himself chinking glasses with Elton John and Jude Law.

Travel would routinely be by private jet - which the businessman appeared to regard as a private plaything.

Today [May 6, 2007], in an exclusive interview in The Mail on Sunday, Jeff Chevalier gives a stunning account of the extravagance of life at the top of BP. The true story about Lord Browne – by ex-rent boy lover (Read on) By Dennis Rice

Mark Alexander

A sad end to an illustrious career: Lord John Browne could face charges of perjury

Photo of Jeff Chevalier courtesy of The Sun

BBC: Former BP chief Lord John Browne may now face charges of perjury amid allegations that he lied to a court about a gay partner, reports say.

Lord Browne quit on Tuesday after the Mail on Sunday won a court battle to print details of his private life.

He also apologised that legal statements he made about a relationship with Jeff Chevalier were "untruthful".

The newspaper said it would be handing its "evidence" against him to the Attorney General for investigation.

The newspaper said it would be handing its "evidence" against him to the Attorney General for investigation.

However, the judge in the High Court case said that he would not be referring the matter as he believed that disclosure in the judgement of Lord Browne's behaviour was "probably sufficient punishment". ’Perjury’ threat for ex-BP boss (Read on)

WATCH BBC VIDEO: BP chief executive resigns

BUSINESS TELEGRAPH (Comment): How Browne's white lie overshadowed a golden career by Tom Stevenson

THE SUN: BP millionaire quits over fibs by Andrew Porter

BBC: Being gay in the world of big business

BBC: Does the UK have a ‘pink plateau’? by Anthony Reuben

Mark Alexander