No beef with Old Blighty

If the latter is true, then a good many Americans should also be expected to
come to BP’s defense. Stats from BP’s own website show that, while 40 percent
of the company’s public shares are held by individuals and institutions in the
United Kingdom, American ownership of BP stock is nearly identical: 39 percent.

Is this a British company? Well, BP CEO Tony Hayward certainly speaks with a
British accent, whether he’s telling us that he’s “deeply sorry” or whether
he’s arguing that the spill isn’t such a big deal since the Gulf of Mexico is
such a big ocean. (Tony, I’m deeply sorry, but the spill now covers a surface
equal to about half of England.)

Still, though it’s registered in the U.K., has British government and
commerical roots that go back over 100 years and is the largest corporation
headquartered in Britain, BP is among the more truly multinational corporations
around, as shown by its scope of operations (the whole planet) as well as the
citizenship of its shareholders. What’s more, its 14-member board of directors
counts an equal number of Brits and Yanks (six each), plus one Dutchman and one
Swede, who happens to be the chairman.

OK, so that limits things to northern Europe and the USA, but it seems
clear that this really isn’t “British Petroleum” anymore.

At any rate, our cousins on the other side should understand that, as a rule,
we in the U.S. are fully able to make the distinction between a publicly held
corporation and the nation where that corporation is registered. Americans
certainly don’t hold themselves responsible when Exxon, Proctor and Gamble or
Microsoft offends, so why would we blame the Brits for BP’s mistakes? When news
came out recently about alarmingly high suicide rates among employees at a
Chinese factory where iPhones are made, I wanted to question Apple’s ethics,
but I certainly didn’t accept any personal responsibility for the situation.

Relax, Albion. What really should be worrying you lot is our breathtaking 1-1
victory in Saturday’s World Cup match. We may not understand the game, and we
certainly don’t know why the guys didn’t keep playing until somebody really
won, but we do like the fact that no timeouts means zero commercials for 45
minutes straight.

And, cor, we showed that our national soccer team is finally getting somewhere.
Maybe it helps that over a third of our roster actually make their living
playing for teams in Britain.