<story><title>Sunak’s family firm signed deal with BP before opening new North Sea licences</title><url>https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/sunaks-family-firm-signed-a-billion-dollar-deal-with-bp-before-pm-opened-new-north-sea-licences-353690/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toyg</author><text>But that&amp;#x27;s the structural problem with the likes of Sunak being in government: maybe it&amp;#x27;s all legitimate business, but because of his role it looks bad, and there is no real way to prove it one way or the other.&lt;p&gt;An honourable person would recuse himself from situations where even &lt;i&gt;the suggestion&lt;/i&gt; of impropriety is possible. Sunak should not have been PM to start with.</text></item><item><author>mattzito</author><text>This feels like a nothingburger:&lt;p&gt;- Infosys already had a $100m&amp;#x2F;year contract with BP&lt;p&gt;- the new contract is 1.5b over 10 years, so a significant increase, but as part of the contract infosys becomes the primary IT partner for BP, therefore not an unimaginable increase&lt;p&gt;- Infosys&amp;#x27;s customers include Shell, Aramco, Chevron, and others.  They&amp;#x27;re one of the top IT services company for the energy industry, so this isn&amp;#x27;t an outlandish customer for them to have&lt;p&gt;- Infosys&amp;#x27;s revenue in 2021 was $12b, making this contract 
~1% of their annual revenue.  The net increase over their previous contract is .4%&lt;p&gt;In short, this looks like a fairly standard contract from a provider that was already heavily represented in the industry and has an existing substantial investment with the customer - and one that doesn&amp;#x27;t materially impact the trajectory of the company.  Other than the timing of the events, there doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be anything to suggest inappropriate actions on anyone&amp;#x27;s part.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mattzito</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not from the UK, so I don&amp;#x27;t have a deep understanding of the dynamics of politics there, but it seems like avoiding all situations where even the suggestion of impropriety is impractical for just about everybody who might be in a position to be PM.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re in a position of power, you&amp;#x27;re going to have relationships where there might be the appearance of impropriety for anything - and you may not even know there would be the suggestion of impropriety until after the fact.&lt;p&gt;Infosys has 40 clients w&amp;#x2F; greater than $100m&amp;#x2F;year contracts, which they don&amp;#x27;t enumerate individually, but from skimming the internet, it looks like oil and gas, banking, manufacturing, and tech companies all potentially fit into that bucket - so should he recuse himself from everything that is related to any of those industries?&lt;p&gt;Before he was married into Infosys, he was a banker and presumably has lots of relationships with these large companies regardless - should he recuse himself from anything that might touch any of those large companies?  Not a rhetorical question, I&amp;#x27;m trying to understand what the criteria is.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sunak’s family firm signed deal with BP before opening new North Sea licences</title><url>https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/sunaks-family-firm-signed-a-billion-dollar-deal-with-bp-before-pm-opened-new-north-sea-licences-353690/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toyg</author><text>But that&amp;#x27;s the structural problem with the likes of Sunak being in government: maybe it&amp;#x27;s all legitimate business, but because of his role it looks bad, and there is no real way to prove it one way or the other.&lt;p&gt;An honourable person would recuse himself from situations where even &lt;i&gt;the suggestion&lt;/i&gt; of impropriety is possible. Sunak should not have been PM to start with.</text></item><item><author>mattzito</author><text>This feels like a nothingburger:&lt;p&gt;- Infosys already had a $100m&amp;#x2F;year contract with BP&lt;p&gt;- the new contract is 1.5b over 10 years, so a significant increase, but as part of the contract infosys becomes the primary IT partner for BP, therefore not an unimaginable increase&lt;p&gt;- Infosys&amp;#x27;s customers include Shell, Aramco, Chevron, and others.  They&amp;#x27;re one of the top IT services company for the energy industry, so this isn&amp;#x27;t an outlandish customer for them to have&lt;p&gt;- Infosys&amp;#x27;s revenue in 2021 was $12b, making this contract 
~1% of their annual revenue.  The net increase over their previous contract is .4%&lt;p&gt;In short, this looks like a fairly standard contract from a provider that was already heavily represented in the industry and has an existing substantial investment with the customer - and one that doesn&amp;#x27;t materially impact the trajectory of the company.  Other than the timing of the events, there doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be anything to suggest inappropriate actions on anyone&amp;#x27;s part.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>penguin_booze</author><text>&amp;gt; Sunak should not have been PM to start with&lt;p&gt;Care you expand more? I thought (granted, without any evidence) he&amp;#x27;s poised better compared to his predecessors. Better in what way? Well, not a clown; lasted more than 45 days -- neither of which, I admit, is not high praise.&lt;p&gt;So, I thought he was maybe a decent chap. I&amp;#x27;d be interested in any pointers au contraire.&lt;p&gt;Regardless, I agree on the recusal part: Caesar&amp;#x27;s wife must be above all suspicion.</text></comment>