Helge Lund in line for big payout after short stint as BG chief

Helge Lund was hired to turn round BG Group. Instead, after just eight weeks as chief executive of BG, the Norwegian is looking for a new job in the wake of Royal Dutch Shell's agreed takeover of the UK energy group.

Already facing heavy criticism and scrutiny of his pay deal at BG, Mr Lund is likely to be well remunerated for his short stint. The former chief executive of Statoil could be in line for a payout of up to £28m, assuming that he stays until the likely closing of the BG takeover early next year.

"The fact is that I don't know what that amount will be - it will only be clear after the transaction is completed," Mr Lund said on Wednesday.

Few chief executives have been in the job for such a short time before announcing a sale. Piquantly, one of the few is Sam Laidlaw, who sold Enterprise Oil to Shell in 2002 within four months of becoming chief executive.

"I am in full support of the deal," Mr Lund told the Financial Times, although he admitted he had "mixed emotions" about it as the Shell offer emerged a month after he started the job at the start of February.

"I was looking forward to running the company for the next few years - I was looking forward to helping it do a lot better on its own," he added, saying he had "no intention of quitting half way through" what could be up to a further year in the role.

Mr Lund arrived at BG from Statoil, the Norwegian energy group, with a decent reputation but some of that was sullied in the bruising battle over his pay.

Under the terms of his original deal, he could have earned up to £14m a year, making him the highest paid chief executive of an oil company in Europe. He would have earned 10 times his pay at Statoil at a company with revenues that are just a fifth of the Norwegian group's.

His pay was revised down after a shareholder backlash. But Mr Lund is still likely to earn more in his brief time at BG than his entire decade in charge of Statoil.

In Norway, some analysts speculated that the ex-McKinsey consultant could return to his former company or become a government minister. "We believe that a Statoil comeback is a very likely scenario," said Alex Gheorghe, analyst at Norwegian brokers Platou, who called him "still the right person" for Statoil.

People close to Statoil rejected the idea as "ridiculous". Mr Lund himself said he had not had "two minutes" to think about what he would do next but denied longstanding rumours that he could become a minister in Norway's centre-right government.

A friend said Mr Lund was likely to have the ambition for another executive role, pointing to his former positions as a non-executive director at drugmaker Novo Nordisk and technology group Nokia. "He's analytical, he's decisive, he likes being involved operationally," he said.

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