How did it all go so wrong at BP? Narrow window for firm to avoid becoming prime takeover target

When BP's board faces shareholders at its investor day later this month, there will be many questions to answer, and for many, the biggest one will be: how did things go so wrong?

- Jillian Ambrose

The FTSE 100 oil company was once valued at more than £140bn, but today its shares trade at a market valuation of less than half that. BP has lost almost a quarter of its value in the past two years, while its rivals in Europe and the US have managed to grow and in some cases report record annual profits.

In recent weeks the company has set out plans to cut thousands of jobs from its global workforce, amounting to 5% of its staff, in an effort to save billions in costs to appease its worried shareholders.

BP has fallen out of favour with many investors since embarking on a plan to slash its oil and gas production in favour of spending billions on renewable energy projects. Although it has since backtracked from its full green ambitions, for some the road ahead appears uncertain, though reports emerged at the weekend that the activist investor firm Elliott Investment Management has built a "significant" stake in BP and sees it as undervalued.