Tony Hayward, BP’s new chief executive, has been given a rave review by the markets for his plan to reshape the company he inherited from Lord Browne. (Helped, it must be said, by a new record oil price.)

In the full transcript of his interview, he agrees that what he wants is fewer accountants and more engineers. For a company that certainly seems to have been over-dominated by accountants, that must sound like a good thing. But accountants have their uses, especially if you are trying to control costs. BP’s share price stands at a deep discount to ExxonMobil’s for a reason, and part of that reason is that Mr Hayward has yet to prove that he can deliver the improved financial performance he wants. He may be saying all the right things, but cash says more about a company than strategy statements ever can.

On Thursday, BP will apparently give some of the details of the planned restructuring to be launched by Tony Hayward, the new chief executive who took over unexpectedly rapidly at the beginning of May.

Since a story last month by my colleague Sheila McNulty, based on a leaked note of a staff meeting in Houston addressed by Mr Hayward, that announcement has been known to be imminent. And analysts are already beginning to talk it up as one of the things that they believe will mark a turn in the tide for BP.

It is not expected to be the sort of restructuring that results in large-scale redundancies, although some jobs may go. Instead, it is intended to rectify what is seen both inside and outside the company as an excessively complex, fragmented structure that was allowed to develop under Lord Browne, the previous chief executive. Bain has been called in to advise on making the organisational structure simpler.

After what will certainly be a pretty dismal set of third quarter results, if perhaps not quite "dreadful", things are beginning to look up for BP, with some key projects coming on stream. Greater Plutonio in Angola started production at the beginning of October, Atlantis in the Gulf of Mexico is on course to do the same before the end of the year. The refineries at Texas City and Whiting are set to get back to full capacity by next year. So even if Mr Hayward basically did nothing and coasted along for a bit, BP’s operational and financial performance would improve sharply over the next few months. Where he will earn his money, though, is if he manages to sustain that improvement.

Analysts are beginning to turn positive. As Neil McMahon of Sanford Bernstein put it - mixing his metaphors, but you get his point - "near term catalysts suggest that this ship is turning".

All the same, we should remember that launching a restructuring is the easy bit. Making it work will be much harder. And BP has been here before - several times - with past attempts to address what were seen as organisational weaknesses. Some of them ended up making matters worse, and are among the complexities that Mr Hayward now wants to undo.

The most entertaining and insightful take on Mr Hayward’s aspirations came from my eminent colleague Lucy Kellaway, picking up on our report that he had said he wanted a "leadership style that really listens". As she puts it: "Listening is only the first of four increasingly hard things leaders do. After they have listened, they must think. Then make a decision. Then implement. The fourth one is always the hardest." That is true in every company; it is true with a vengeance at BP.

As the FT reported last week, BP is starting to think about finding a new chairman to replace Peter Sutherland, although not with any great degree of urgency just yet. Mr Sutherland has got until 2009, and seems likely step down at that year’s AGM. Anna Mann, the doyenne of London headhunters, has been hired, but is still in the early stages of her work. Sir Ian Prosser, as the senior non-executive director, is in charge of the search.

Various names have been kicked around in speculation, but none of them seem quite right. With all due respect to Sir Nigel Rudd, for example, he does not quite seem the right man for such a massive challenge as sustaining a turnaround at BP, which may still be a fragile bloom by the spring of 2009.

Of the current non-execs, Sir William Castell is the pre-eminent candidate for the top job. But BP appears also to want to look outside. Like Jorma Ollila, the former Nokia chief executive, at Royal Dutch Shell, the chairman is likely to have a background from outside the oil industry.

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Once again, there has been a flurry on the web in several places, some of them unexpected, about a possible BP merger with Shell. The FT has long reported that the idea of a merger was kicked around by BP in 2005, when its management was one of the most respected in the world. (FT story may require subscription.) Then, BP was riding high, and Shell was weakened by the scandal over reserves misreporting that broke in 2004.

Now, the positions are reversed. The logic of merger still applies, however, and so do the arguments against. On the pro side, there would be a lot of duplicated costs that could be saved, and perhaps a way to unlock the hidden value that some analysts have found in Shell and BP. One the con side, there are the terrifying regulatory issues in the dozens of different jurisdictions in which the two countries operate. The management challenge of integrating the two companies would also  be horrendous, and a dangerous distraction from what should be their real focus now: getting their operations right and finding more oil and gas.

But perhaps even more than that, there is the quiestion of personalities. Who would end up running the company created by this supposed "friendly" merger? At BP, Tony Hayward has only just climbed to the top of the greasy pole to become chief executive. At Shell, Jeroen Van der Veer deserves longer to enjoy the rewards of having steered the company into calmer waters, and the board has given him just that. Why on earth would either of them choose to play second fiddle?

The British papers this morning are full of stories about Lord Browne’s downfall. The Daily Mail, sister paper of the Mail on Sunday, which first wanted to publish the story about Lord Browne’s former partner, has some of the fiercest coverage. My colleague Chris Hughes has been looking at what the future holds for Lord Browne, and points out that the damage done to his credibility by his lie to a court, however apparently insignificant and short-lived, will be hard to recover from.

Private equity, which thrives away from the limelight, is one likely option. He already has a role at Apax Partners, the buy-out firm, and his great success at BP was his deal-making. But his public face, if he has one, is most likely to be in some sort of charitable or campaigning work. As I pointed out here last week, Lord Browne has thought a lot about climate change, and wants to remain involved in the fight to avert the threat of global warming. It would be a shame if the scandal that brought him down also prevents him playing a role in that effort.

Peter Sutherland, BP’s feisty chairman, has had a strained relationship with John Browne, the company’s chief executive who quit yesterday. Yet he called Lord Browne’s hasty departure - caused by the fact that Lord Browne lied to a judge - a "tragedy" and said his immediate resignation was prompted by the chief executive’s "sense of honour." Though, certainly a "shabby end to a brilliant career," as my colleague Ed Crooks writes, "tragedy" was perhaps an unfortunate word for Mr Sutherland to use. Just weeks ago, at BP’s AGM, one shareholder stood to chastise Mr Sutherland and BP for often calling the company’s Texas City refinery explosion, in which 15 people died, an incident instead of a tragedy. Loren Steffy, of the Houston Chronicle, picked up on the theme, writing in his blog: "A tragedy? No, that would have been more than two years ago in Texas City. Where was Browne’s sense of honour then?"