Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Why hasn't Obama called BP's Tony Hayward??

When President Obama was asked by NBC's Matt Lauer why he had not yet called the CEO of BP about the Gulf oil spill, he said he assumed CEO's just told presidents things they wanted to hear.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had another answer.

Gibbs said Obama hasn’t called CEO Tony Hayward because — according to what Gibbs called the “executive structure of corporate governance” — the CEO alone isn’t the final word on company decisions, which are made by the board of directors.

“Look, the CEO is elected by the board. Anything that the CEO wants to do has to be approved by the board,” Gibbs said.

Later, he added: “I’m telling you, based on the corporate governance structure, in order to implement what — whatever you get from BP the CEO has to get clearance from the board to do. That’s — that’s the corporate governance structure is — is laid out.”

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