Global board diversity: traditional thinking holding back progress

While there has been more debate about achieving more diversity on company boards, the Global Board of Directors survey 2016 has found that despite the intense investor and media scrutiny – public company directors are no more diverse that the …

UK MPs launch corporate governance inquiry

The House of Commons’ Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) Committee has launched an inquiry on corporate governance, focussing on executive pay, directors duties, and the composition of boardrooms, including worker representation and gender balance in executive positions.

This follows the …

As board diversity stalls, new push to breakdown barriers and improve pipeline

After the initial push to increase board diversity over the past five years, progress appears to have slowed according to two reports published by the UK government and Cranfield School of Management.

The UK government has therefore launched a review …

Aligning board talent and company strategy is a key challenge survey finds

Aligning board talent with a company’s long-term strategy is a critical challenge for three-quarters of corporate directors according to a global survey by KPMG’s Board Leadership Center. The advisory firm surveyed more than 2,300 directors and senior executives across 46 …

Finance companies lag on diversity

Big challenges remain if the financial sector is to make last changes to improve the diversity of their executives following the UK’s Gadhia Review and the launch of the government’s Women in Finance Charter, according to the think tank, …

New York City pension funds proxy access campaign success

US investors passed the first shareholder resolution in a decade at ExxonMobil when they voted to back the proxy access resolution at its recent AGM. The non-binding resolution called for the oil company to give investors that have jointly held …

UK’s Financial Reporting Council provides feedback on succession planning consultation

Achieving greater board diversity to improve company performance was the most pressing concern of respondents to the UK’s Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) succession planning consultation.

The FRC’s feedback statement on the consultation found that respondents believed that boards as a …

Women gain more places on European company boards

A study of European companies, Realizing Europe’s Potential: Progress and Challenges, for the EU-backed European Women on Boards (EWoB) network has shown a steady rise in the number of women on their boards following the imposition of quotas in …

Persimmon seeks to blame proxy advisors for NED’s slim majority

Construction firm, Persimmon, faced significant opposition in the vote to elect Nigel Mills as one their non-executive directors. There was a 47% vote against Mills’ appointment, due to independence concerns, …

Still work to do to break up old boy networks says UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission

UK companies continue to use personal networks when recruiting board members, which acts as a barrier to women becoming directors, according to an inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The study found that while the overall target set …