Tony Hayward’s making the headlines, but Rothschild’s the one they’re betting on
Remember Lasse Viren, the Finnish policeman who fell over halfway through the 1972 Olympic 10,000 metres final in Munich only to rise again, sprint past the leaders, and win gold in world record
time? Well, he’s got nothing on Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP who stumbled so woefully in his handling of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster that he seemed
to have been howled right out of the stadium of big-corporate life.
Less than a year after that global public humiliation, Hayward is back on his feet and fronting a new venture called Vallares which has just raised £1.35 billion from investors — half
of them American — to acquire as-yet-unidentified oil and gas assets in emerging markets. The capital-raising comfortably exceeded its £1 billion target, and as soon as Vallares
actually finds a business to buy, the £20 million worth of ‘founders’ securities’ for which Hayward and three partners — Nat Rothschild, his associate Tom Daniel and
ex-Goldman Sachs banker Julian Metherell — have ante’d up will convert into 7 per cent of the whole company, bringing them a windfall worth many times their stake money.
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