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Swedish BP chairman ‘whisked married lover on luxury cruise as oil spill chaos erupted’

By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 11:59 PM on 1st July 2010

He was brought in as a steady hand to make BP’s troubles go away.

But chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg has put the company back into the spotlight, this time with embarrassing revelations about his personal life.

The gaffe-prone Swede is said to have begun an affair with a married mother-of-three just as his own marriage collapsed.

So enamoured was he with Louise Julian that within days of the oil spill erupting, he allegedly whisked her away for a cruise on board his 77-foot luxury yacht, the Cygnus Montanus II.

Love-boat cruise? Louise Julian and BP boss Carl-Henric Svanberg are said to have visited Thailand, Australia, Bali and Singapore as the Deepwater crisis escalated

As millions of gallons spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, the 58-year-old and the Swedish-born blonde were believed to have been sunning themselves on a tour of Thailand, Australia, Bali and Singapore.

They even stopped off at BP’s crisis headquarters in Houston as they made their way home from their trip around Asia.

Svanberg was brought in as BP’s public face after chief executive Tony Hayward made a string of gaffes including moaning that he ‘wanted his life back’.

But he has also blundered and sparked fury when he called those affected by the spill ‘little people’ whom BP would look after.

In recent weeks he has also shied away from his promise to become the company’s figurehead and allowed other directors to take the lead in interviews and TV shows.

According to US reports Svanberg and Julian, 51, a mother-of-three, began dating in November last year.

That same month Svanberg divorced from his wife Angeta, with whom he has three children, and gave her £330million in a settlement.

Julian’s relationship had already ended and in May she had divorced her language school headmaster husband Gary, 48, citing irreconcilable differences – court documents state they ‘were no longer able to communicate effectively and no longer shared the same goals’.

There is no claim of infidelity, and Svanberg’s name is not mentioned in the court papers.

But there is little doubt that he and his new love moved in similar circles and are of comparable stature in their respective industries.

She is chief executive of EF, an international language school company and was named Sweden’s most powerful businesswoman in 2004. Fortune magazine named her as the 35th most powerful businesswoman in the world in 2005.

Her success has made her extremely wealthy too – under the terms of the divorce her ex-husband will get around £1.3million and a home in Beaver Creek, Colorado, while she will keep their main home in Brookline, Massachusetts and two homes in Stockholm.

‘We know Svanberg has been romancing Louise Julian for quite some time.’ said Robin Govik, news editor at the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

‘We also know that he went to Thailand with her a couple of day’s after BP’s oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. His private yacht was in the marina in Phuket’.

BP’s share price has more than halved since the April 20 catastrophe, which has claimed 13 lives.

Senior executives have been sent on a charm offensive around the world in a bid to restore the company’s battered reputation.

Mr Hayward has been to Russia and is preparing to travel to China next week to brief officials in Beijing and to meet PetroChina, a joint venture partner collaborating with BP on the giant Rumaila field in Iraq.

However analysts have said that the company’s value has fallen so much it is now a takeover target.

The oil spill today became the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico, an ominous record that underscores the oil giant’s dire need to halt the gusher.

The oil that’s spewed for two and a half months from a blown-out well a mile under the sea hit the 140.6 million gallon mark, eclipsing the record-setting, 140-million-gallon Ixtoc I spill off Mexico’s coast from 1979 to 1980.

Nobody from BP was available for comment.


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