State Street’s $3.1tn investment arm will start voting against directors of big companies that fail to disclose the racial and ethnic make-up of their boards, a move that will increase the mounting pressure on corporations to diversify their leadership. For this year, the Boston-based asset manager is only calling on companies to report the information….
Category: board diversity
Comment From Doug Chia on NASDAQ Board Diversity Proposal
Doug Chia‘s comment on the NASDAQ proposal for board diversity disclosure is well worth reading in full (see below). An excerpt; Nasdaq’s proposed rules are purely disclosure-based. The new rules would require listed companies to disclose information about the gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of their boards.1 This is disclosure about a board’s diversity or lack thereof. It would…
Equity in the Boardroom: Majority Action and SEIU
Majority Action and SEIU have produced an excellent new report on board diversity, in full below. Highlights of findings and recommendations: Of the 178 S&P 500 companies that had no Black directors as of their 2020 annual meetings, BlackRock voted to support the entire board at 163 companies and Vanguard voted to support the entire…
VEA Vice Chair Quoted on Nasdaq’s proposed new diversity requirements.
Corporate governance expert and vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors Nell Minow said the proposed Nasdaq rules are just one step in the right direction. “It’s about time that the exchanges started stepping up to the plate on some of these issues. They’re in a much better position to address all kinds of corporate governance issues…
Nasdaq Proposes Board-Diversity Rule for Listed Companies – WSJ
Nasdaq Inc. aims to require listed companies to include women and people of diverse racial identities or sexual orientation on their boards, a move that could prompt change at hundreds of companies. The exchange operator filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require listed companies to have at least one woman…
More “Zombie Directors” as Investor Scrutiny Intensifies
The CEOs who poured so much money into pushing back on shareholder proposals and access to independent research may be sorry to discover the focus shift to no votes on directors. A new report from MSCI reveals that 54 directors on the boards of 32 companies in the MSCI USA investable market index (2,313 companies)…
Qualcomm’s corporate board sued for lack of diversity, failure to appoint Black directors – The San Diego Union-Tribune
A Qualcomm shareholder has sued the company’s corporate directors for failing to bring Blacks onto the board or into top executive roles while repeatedly touting diversity efforts in public. The lawsuit, which comes in the wake of widespread Black Lives Matter protests over racial inequality, is one of three shareholder derivative legal actions recently filed…
25% gender quota introduced for Greek companies | Minerva-Manifest
Greek companies will soon be mandated to meet a 25% female quota on their boards following a landmark decision for gender diversity. The quota requirement has been included as an amendment to the bill transposing the EU Shareholder Rights Directive II (SRD II) into Greek law, and is the result of a consultation led by…
The Results Are In: The Surprising Relationship Among Revenue Growth, Board Gender Diversity, And Long-Term Value Creation
As part of the effort to research long-term value creation across the investment value chain, FCLTGlobal has reached a significant and surprising finding: board gender diversity is as important as revenue growth in predicting a company’s long-term success. This finding could bring about a paradigm shift within global boardrooms and C-suites, where tremendous resources are…
Women’s representation on corporate boards can’t rely on quotas | Fortune
By changing its “guidance” to “requirements,” the SEC could force companies to include a description of how they recruit directors and ensure board diversity in their annual filings and proxy statement disclosures. The key here is mandating transparency to shine a light on the companies who aren’t merely talking the talk, but walking the walk….
