BP chief Lord Browne resigns
Updated on 01 May 2007
Lord Browne, BP's chief executive, stands down after admitting he lied in court about his relationship with a gay lover.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to describe him as a colossus of the business world - someone who's been at the top of one of Britain's biggest companies for years.
Now Lord Browne has fallen from grace, resigning as BP's chief executive after losing a court battle to keep details of his private life secret.
The peer had gone to court to stop a former male partner from revealing their relationship to a newspaper, and he admitted lying when he was questioned about he and Jeff Chevalier met.
He had been due to step down in the summer, but now loses out on a multi-million pound leaving package.
Lord Browne
The BP chief executive has long sought to keep his private life out of the public eye, despite having one of the highest-profile jobs in business.
He was born plain John Browne in 1948. His father was a British Army officer and his mother a Hungarian Auschwitz survivor. He gained a first-class degree in physics from Cambridge before studying business at Stanford.
Browne joined BP as an apprentice while he was still an undergraduate. In 1969 he started work as a field engineer in Alaska, and remained at the corporation his whole working life. He became CEO in 1995.
He is regarded as having turned round the fortunes of BP, making it one of the most successful energy companies in the world. He oversaw its expansion in the US and its merger with oil group Amoco in 1998. He was knighted the same year, and in 2001 he was created a life peer as Lord Browne of Madingley.
He is known to be a friend of Tony Blair. He served on the Sustainable Development Commission and there are even rumours that he wanted to start a venture capital firm with Blair after the latter had stepped down from government.
He is known to enjoy arts, antiques and fine cigars, and has often been referred to as a "bachelor". However he undertook a legal battle to prevent Associated Newspapers from publishing details of his four-year relationship with a Canadian man, Jeff Chevalier.
