Robert Dudley, the first American to become BP’s chief executive, will take over for reigning boss Tony Hayward on October 1. Tuesday, the company also revealed record losses in its second quarter.

Although rumors had been circulating that Hayward was stepping down as the company’s chief executive, it was not until Tuesday that BP confirmed the move to replace him with Dudley.

Company Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told investors during a Web cast “BP will change as a result of this accident… We are taking a hard look at ourselves, what we do and how we do it. What we learn will have implications for our ways of working, our strategy and our governance.”

He also revealed the company had a record loss in its second quarter of $17 billion.

Svanberg said the company is determined to restore value to shareholders after a $60 billion drop in BP’s market value since the April 20 rig explosion on the Deepwater Horizon platform that killed 11 people and created the leak that resulted in oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Dudley said he is cognizant of the complexities of what BP must do to regain its financial strength and stabilize its reputation. He noted that the massive oil spill was a “wake-up call not only for BP, but the oil and gas industry overall, and we will be looking deeply at our review of operational safety and what we have learned from this spill.”

ABC News reports that BP has set aside $32.2 billion to cover the cost of the devastating oil spill.