CFOZone.com - The Network of Corporate Finance

From the FT: Lord Davies, the former trade minister who has been leading a government inquiry on the issue of women in the boardroom, recommended that FTSE 100 companies aim for at least a quarter of their boards to be made up of women by 2015, while FTSE 350 companies should clearly outline the percentage of women they expect to see on their boards by 2013 and 2015.

But he warned this was the last chance corporate Britain would have to force through change itself and said statutory quotas would be brought in if voluntary targets failed to produce results.

Lord Davies said all chairmen should announce their aspirational goals for women on boards within the next six months and publish their own targets, and comply with them or explain why they had not done so.

Half of companies in the FTSE 250 have no women directors at all, while female representation in the FTSE 100 has been stuck at 12.5 per cent for the past three years.

*****Lord Davies also wants chief executives to review the percentage of women they aim to have on executive committees over a two- and four-year period to boost the number of women in the talent pool that feeds the boardroom.


I laud his efforts and hope that it does spur action to increase female representation on boards and in executives. I am not sure how I feel about set quotas, however. Is there a better mechanism?

Also in Belgium, there's a bill mandating that no less then one-third of board members be female, with a 2017 deadline. Smaller companies have until 2019. There's not even a chance we'd ever have a bill like that in this country. And of course there's no guarantee the bill will be passed.