Lord Browne urges businesses to end discrimination against homosexuals The former BP chief executive, who resigned after it emerged he had lied to the High Court about a gay relationship, said yesterday: "My sense is that the business world remains more intolerant of homosexuality than other worlds such as the legal profession, the media and the visual arts . . . I am one of a handful of publicly gay people to have run a FTSE 100 company. Speaking at the launch of Connect Out, a network set up by Arup, the engineering and design consultants, he added: "In some industries, the situation is particularly bad. Among the many people I know in private equity, where I now work, fewer than 1pc are openly gay. Lord Browne, who has not spoken publicly about sexuality in the workplace since his resignation in 2007, said he first realised he was gay in 1960 at boarding school. At the time homosexuality was illegal, though the law was abolished when he went to Cambridge University. It was a very macho and sometimes homophobic environment. I felt I had to conform. Hiding my sexuality did make me unhappy and, in the end, it didn't work. [Vladimir] Putin had files on everybody," said Lord Browne.