Tag: board gender diversity
BlackRock advocates that at least two women be on each company board
The lede from the WSJ is that “for the first time,” BlackRock (reportedly the largest asset management firm with $6.3 trillion under management) is “stating publicly that companies in which it invests should have at least two female directors.” According to the WSJ, the new disclosure, just one component of BlackRock’s recently posted Proxy Voting Guidelines for U.S. Securities (more on the guidelines to come in a later post), “represents a small but significant shift for one of the largest shareholders of American companies.” Board diversity has been a consistent issue for several large institutional investors in recent years but without much specificity, and reportedly, BlackRock has, in the past, quietly encouraged companies to have a minimum of two women on their boards. Now, BlackRock is trumpeting that standard publicly.
Highlights of the 2017 PLI Securities Regulation Institute
Summarized below are some of the highlights of the 2017 PLI Securities Regulation Institute panel discussions with the SEC staff (Michele Anderson, Wesley Bricker, Karen Garnett, William Hinman, Mark Kronforst, Shelley Parratt, Ted Yu), as well as a number of former staffers and other commentators. Topics included the Congressional and SEC agendas, fresh insights into the shareholder proposal guidance, as well as expectations regarding cybersecurity, conflict minerals, pay ratio disclosure, waivers and many other topics.
Asset managers support shareholder proposals for board diversity—will it make a difference?
There’s been chatter about board gender diversity for a long time and, while there has been some modest progress, we have yet to see any dramatic breakthroughs. Now some of the largest asset managers are not just talking the talk, they are also walking the walk. Will it make a difference? Time will tell.
BlackRock sets its priorities for board engagement
by Cydney Posner Asset management firm BlackRock (reportedly the largest, with $5.1 trillion under management) has identified its “Investment Stewardship” priorities for 2017-2018, intended to help companies prepare for engaging with BlackRock. Among the hot topics are governance (including board composition and diversity), corporate strategy for long-term value creation in […]
State Street Global Advisors talks the talk on board gender diversity, but will it walk the walk?
by Cydney Posner Happy International Women’s Day! In this press release, State Street Global Advisors, which manages $2.47 trillion in assets, announced, on the eve of International Women’s Day, that it is “calling on the more than 3,500 companies [in which] State Street invests on behalf of clients, representing more […]
Some successful approaches to increasing board gender diversity
by Cydney Posner A lot has been written about the benefits of gender diversity on boards. As discussed in Bloomberg, while “[e]quality is a worthy goal on its own terms, of course….for the corporate world, the better rationale for gender diversity is financial…. Companies with at least one female director had […]
Board gender diversity? Hedge fund activists fail miserably but women-led businesses fare better
by Cydney Posner As reported earlier this year on Bloomberg, when activists seek to replace directors at target companies, they rarely look to women. Bloomberg analyzed data regarding five of the biggest U.S. activist hedge funds, each managing at least $18 billion in assets. The data showed that, since the […]
Do women directors promote higher CEO pay?
by Cydney Posner As reported on Sunday in this NYT column by Gretchen Morgenson, recent data shows that boards with more gender diversity pay higher compensation to their CEOs. An Equilar analysis of CEO pay at 100 large companies “found that companies with greater gender diversity on their boards paid their chief executives […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.