City profiles

Bob Dudley

The outgoing BP boss marked his last set of results with a 26% fall in year-onyear profits, said the FT. But his parting gift to shareholders was “a bump in the quarterly dividend” – up 2.4% on last year. Dudley is widely credited with rescuing BP in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the US coast – one of the worst-ever American environmental disasters, described by Dudley himself as “a near-death experience” for the company. Environmentalists clearly still have BP in their sights, said Energy Voice. Greenpeace marked the ascension of Dudley’s successor, Bernard Looney, this week by staging a “shutdown” of BP’s corporate HQ in London and claiming it had “delivered hundreds of solar panels to the new CEO”.

Navinder Singh Sarao

The day trader, who allegedly helped trigger a $1trn Wall Street “flash crash” from his west London bedroom in 2010, was dubbed the “Hound of Hounslow” in a mocking reference to the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, says The Times. After extradition to the US, Navinder Singh Sarao, 41, admitted wire fraud and market manipulation and was allowed to return to the UK to await sentencing. But, for once, US prosecutors have proved merciful – arguing that Sarao, who has been diagnosed with autism, should be spared prison since he wasn’t “motivated by greed” and lived a “childlike” existence in his parents’ home, surrounded by “multiple stuffed animals”. Sarao unlawfully earned about $12.8m by “spoofing” markets. But his only big purchase was a £5,000 car.