Charles Greenway

Greenway spent his early career in India with trading and managing-agency firms, rising to partner at Shaw Wallace & Co, which handled Burmah Oil's sales in India. That role brought him into Anglo-Persian's orbit as the company looked for markets for its early products, and led to his move onto its board in 1910.

Charles Greenway (1857-1934) was not among the 1909 incorporators but became the executive who turned Anglo-Persian into a working oil company. A partner in Shaw Wallace & Co, the Indian trading house that acted as Burmah Oil's agent, he joined Anglo-Persian's board in 1910, became managing director and served as chairman from 1914 to 1927. He negotiated the 1914 agreement under which the British government, with Winston Churchill at the Admiralty, paid ~$2.9 million (£2.2 million) for a controlling stake and signed a long-term fuel-oil contract for the Royal Navy. That deal gave the company the money to expand the Abadan refinery and build tanker, distribution and marketing businesses, laying the foundations of the BP brand. He was made Baron Greenway in 1927. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).