Britain's biggest company, British Petroleum, is looking for gay and lesbian employees as part of a drive to ditch traditional business prejudices, according to a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Women and foreign nationals are also being sought by the company in an effort to rid itself of the "golf-club culture", which it believes only encourages white, Anglo-Saxon males.

The company's chief executive, Lord Brown, told a Berlin conference that BP hoped to attract gay and lesbian staff by offering equal benefits to partners in same-sex relationships.

The traditional offer to spouses of pension rights, death benefit provisions and relocation allowances would be extended to gay partners so as to attract "the best everywhere, on the single criterion of merit."

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