And so it was that BP revealed one of the biggest corporate losses in history, fired its boss, and at the same time rewarded him with a bumper pension. Is this another example of reward for failure? Actually, there is more than a touch of irony about how things have turned out with its new, its outgoing and its last boss.

BP had an impressive quarter. In the event profits came in at $5bn, using the replacement cost measure that oil companies prefer. This was a profit after deducting one offs, of course.

Alas, one offs included $32.2bn to cover the costs associated with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

All in all, BP made a loss in the quarter of $17bn.

Apologies for this, but we are now set to use some jargon. Analysts usually define a loss on the scale suffered by BP as “a lot of money”.

Although don’t get too carried away about this. In the scheme of things, BP’s loss was like a piddle in the ocean (or is that an oil drop in an ocean). After all, a company that used to be called AOL Time Warner lost $98.7bn back in 2003. (But of course there are differences; the AOL Time Warner loss was predominantly a paper loss, and was only so large because Time Warner had over-valued AOL in the first place.)

And yet, BP’s outgoing boss is to be given one year’s worth of salary and a pension worth £10m. Not a bad reward for having become known as the most hated man in America.

It is just that much of the criticism aimed at Hayward was unfair. For one thing, he was not responsible for any of the cost cuts that may have caused the oil leak. The great cost cutter was his predecessor, Lord Browne, the man who is now a government adviser.

In all the recriminations over the banking crisis, we were told that rewarding people for results was good, but there had to be a sufficient time lag to ensure good company results were based on solid foundations. But how long should this time lag be? Will it ever be long enough?

Lord Browne must count himself lucky. Leaving the company as he did under a cloud, he is busy dishing out advice while someone else is slammed for the errors that were made under Browne’s watch.

There can be no doubt, Mr Hayward is a terrible PR man. But maybe his biggest error was to be British. We are not saying there was anything xenophobic in the US’s BP and Hayward bashing, rather the American public just didn’t get him. Maybe it was his British understatement that was his undoing.

Of course, under Stalin’s Russia, anyone erring on the scale seen at BP would have been carted off to Siberia. This is rather apt, because it seems Mr H will remain involved in BP, but with its TNK-BP venture based in Siberia.

Meanwhile, his replacement at the BP helm, Bob Dudley, only happens to be the same Bob Dudley that headed the TNK-BP venture, but left under a cloud of his own. At least, it was a cloud as far as Russian authorities were concerned.

It seems hard to believe that there was a time when BP interests in Russia were like a millstone around its corporate neck. In a world of political uncertainty, it seemed BP’s best hopes resided with its US based assets. Now it may be the Russian and Libyan ventures where the stability lies.