Thanks to Chris Hill for inviting VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow on the always-enlightening Motley Fool Money podcast to talk about what’s going on in corporate governance, including the SEC’s proposed rules and Goldman Sachs’ recent announcement on board diversity.
Tag: board diversity
FTSE firms ‘dragging their feet’ over ethnic diversity on boards | Business | The Guardian
FTSE 100 firms including Tui, British Airways owner IAG and the London Stock Exchange Group have been accused of dragging their feet on diversity targets ahead of a looming 2021 deadline. Only 53 of Britain’s largest listed firms on the London Stock Exchange have at least one director from an ethnic minority, according to figures…
Goldman Sachs Won’t Take Companies Public If They Have All-Male Corporate Boards
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC that the investment bank wouldn’t take companies public unless the company had at least one “diverse” board member. Although he didn’t define exactly what he meant by diverse, he said the focus was on women. “Starting on July 1 in the U.S. and Europe, we’re not going to take…
Women on Boards: Hitting an Ambitious Goal in the UK| Korn Ferry
It was an ambitious goal when it was set in 2010: triple the percentage of female board directors on corporate boards by 2020. But as this new year dawned, more than three out of every ten directors—30.6%, to be exact—at the 250 largest publicly traded firms in the UK are women. The goal now? Keep…
State Street CEO Takes the Long View on Shareholder Activism – WSJ
As CEO of State Street Corp., STT 2.10% Ronald O’Hanley is on the front lines of shareholders’ push to bring change to corporate boardrooms. State Street, STT 2.10% whose money-management arm oversees $2.7 trillion in assets, has amassed significant governance power in recent years as investors shifted more money into the lower-cost, index-tracking funds it…
Taking a closer look at female board appointments
[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…
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…
