[T]he demands for greater board diversity continue, raising the question of whether external pressure from shareholders, media, and advocacy groups actually causes firms to appoint women to their boards. The answer is yes, a new study concludes, but there’s a catch: Firms under pressure to appoint female directors tend to do so by adding board…
Category: board diversity
U.S. Chamber Letter on H.R. 5084, the “Improving Corporate Governance through Diversity Act of 2019” | U.S. Chamber of Commerce
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports H.R. 5084, the “Improving Corporate Governance through Diversity Act of 2019,” which the House is expected to vote on today. The Chamber supports efforts to increase gender, racial, and ethnic diversity on corporate…
Women Don’t Mean Business? Gender Penalty in Board Appointments | Academy of Management Proceedings
These troubling but not definitive findings suggest that the market is skeptical about female board members regardless of their credentials. We note that previous studies have shown that two or more female directors are necessary to make a difference. Using 14 years of panel data on U.S. firms, we show that the addition of a…
Scott Stringer Calls for Mandatory Diversity Effort in the Boardroom – The New York Times
New York comptroller Scott Stringer announced a new stage to his office’s Boardroom Accountability project: demanding that companies consider women and ethnic minorities in their searches for C.E.O.s and board members. The comptroller will ask directors of 56 companies to adopt a version of the N.F.L.’s Rooney Rule that requires consideration of diverse candidates for…
Findings of the ISS Global Survey 2019
The findings of the annual ISS survey on investor priorities: Board Gender Diversity: Majorities of both investors (61 percent) and non-investors (55 percent) agreed with the view that board gender diversity is an essential attribute of effective board governance regardless of the company or its market. Approximately 27 percent of investors tended to favor a market-by-market…
New Illinois Law Requires Corporations to Report Diversity on Corporate Boards
A new Illinois law, Public Act 101-0589, signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker on August 27, 2019, aims to encourage diversity on the boards of directors of publicly held domestic and foreign corporations with principal executive offices in Illinois. The bill passed both houses of the General Assembly as House Bill 3394. P.A. 101-0589 requires that…
A $750 Billion Midwest Fund Group Pushes for Board Diversity – Bloomberg
A group of 11 pension and union funds with a collective $750 billion in assets has picked up the mantle [on board diversity in small and mid-size companies]. Called the Midwest Investor Diversity Initiative, the group, which includes the United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office and the Ohio Public…
Intercontinental Exchange Launches NYSE Board Advisory Council to Advance Board Diversity – Bloomberg
This announcement from the NYSE about a new program to support board diversity undermines its own credibility from the start by referring to the member CEOs’ “own personal networks” as the way to find directors. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), announced the launch of the NYSE…
Corporate Board Practices in the Russell 3000 and S&P 500: 2019 Edition | The Conference Board
Corporate governance has undergone a profound transformation in the last two decades, as a result of the legislative and regulatory changes that have expanded director responsibilities as well as the rise of more vocal shareholders. Yet the composition of the board of directors has not changed as rapidly as other governance practices, and to this…
Why Can’t Boards Achieve Diversity?
Here is the lede from this WSJ article: “A stubborn paradox reigns across U.S. boardrooms: Companies are appointing more women to board seats than ever, yet the overall share of female directors is barely budging.” In comments to the WSJ, the managing director for corporate governance research at the Conference Board indicated that, in “the…
