(BFM Stock Exchange) – According to Bloomberg, the activist fund would have taken a significant participation in the British oil group with a view to changing its strategy, and thus relaunching its price on the stock market.

The British BP Hydrocarbons giant flies over 6% on the London Stock Exchange on Monday, after press information during the weekend reporting a “significant” equity investment fund Elliott Management.

Investors reacted to information published on Sunday by the Bloomberg agency, revealing that Elliott Investment Management “acquired significant participation in the British energy giant”, without specifying its scale.

A trained scholarship course

The BP scholarship course is lagging behind in relation to its rivals, especially American. However, the Elliott fund is known to request strategic changes within the groups in which it invests.

This information propels the BP stock price from 6.5% to 461.65 PENCE. Contacted by AFP, BP did not wish to comment. The Elliott Fund had not responded immediately.

“This is not the first time that a BP target activist investor”, in particular to ask him “to abandon his fossil fuel reduction goals”, recalls Kathleen Brooks, analyst at XTB.

The BlueBell activist fund has been calling for more than a year BP to revise its ambitions deemed “irrational” on clean energies. But “the difference here is that Elliott is better known than BlueBell and is used to imposing the changes he wants within companies,” continues Ms. Brooks.

2024 results less good than hoped

BP, which is due to publish its annual result on Tuesday for 2024, announced last month 4,700 internal job cuts and 3,000 in its subcontractors, as part of a multi-year “simplification and refocusing program” intended to improve its competitiveness and “reduce its costs”.

The group announced throughout the year 2024 results much worse than hoped, with strong falls fall on the first three quarters.

In the hope of boosting its price on the stock market, BP announced in December its intention to “significantly” reduce its investments in renewable energies, after having already slowed down on its climatic objectives.

This is a change in radical strategy for the company, which had distinguished itself from 2020 by an ambitious carbon neutrality plan.

And BP could go further: investors have been speculating for months on a possible imminent abandonment of its promise to reduce oil production by 25% by 2030 compared to its levels of 2019.

(With AFP)