New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer and the New York City Pension Funds today announced that after less than a year, the groundbreaking “Boardroom Accountability Project 2.0” (BAP 2.0) campaign, an initiative which pushes for greater corporate board diversity and transparency reforms, has accomplished unprecedented engagement with more than half of the 151 major U.S. companies targeted. The announcement reflects the growing momentum for greater transparency and diversity from often insular and homogenous boardrooms.In the campaign’s launch last September, Comptroller Stringer and the NYC Funds wrote to 151 public companies in the Funds’ portfolios – 80 percent of which are in the S&P 500 – calling for the disclosure of a board “matrix,” a table describing the skills, gender and race/ethnicity of individual directors on the board; and engagement with independent directors regarding “refreshment” opportunities to bring new voices and viewpoints into the boardroom.
Since then, over 85 companies have adopted improved processes and increased transparency regarding board quality, diversity and refreshment, and over 35 companies are now disclosing not only the qualifications of their board members, but also details on boardroom gender and racial/ethnic diversity – information which up-to-now was rarely made public.
