Category: Board

In this report, we look at the breakdown of non-executive and executive director appointments. The UK economy sprung back to life in the second quarter as the government’s phased reopening plan saw the return of non-essential retail and outdoor hospitality in April followed by indoor hospitality and some events in May. Though England’s so-called ‘Freedom Day’, removing all remaining legal restrictions, was delayed by four weeks, pushing it into Q3, it didn’t blight the growing optimism among UK businesses, which for many has been brewing since Q1.

In this report, we look at the breakdown of non-executive and executive director appointments. As is tradition, we have crunched the data to identify both new and continuing trends while also highlighting notable individual appointments for the period Q1 2021. Rising Covid-19 infections at the end of last year meant the first quarter of 2021 was dominated by another strict national lockdown in the UK. Yet despite the renewed stress on economic activity, and Covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths spiking higher than the 2020 peak, December to February saw the first quarterly drop in unemployment since 2019, ONS figures revealed.

In this report, we analyse the board appointments to the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 listed companies in Q4 2020 and share a deeper analysis of the full year. We now have three full years of analysis and trends from our close monitoring of the FTSE 350 board appointments. Following our 2018 report, we have continued to publish quarterly updates allowing us to see the emerging trends, most particularly the rapid rise in the number of women in the boardrooms and that, in turn, revealed the yawning gap between the relative numbers of women in non-executive director roles and executive director roles, one of the most serious governance issues facing us.

In this report, we look at the breakdown of non-executive and executive director appointments and, as we have done in past reports, identify the trends and the individuals concerned. Our analysis again shows interesting trends. In our report for the full 2019 year, we showed the dramatic fall off in executive director appointments, essentially CEOs and CFOs, as the Brexit debate and parliamentary debacle intensified through that year. In all of 2019, there were only 69 executive director appointments at the FTSE 350 companies, compared to 119 in 2018. Looking now at the 2020 year-to-date appointments, we can see the turnaround with 73 executive director appointments already in the first 9 months.

In this report, we look at the breakdown of non-executive and executive director appointments and, as we have done in past reports, identify the trends and the individuals
concerned. In this report we also take a brief look at that most contentious and complex of boardroom issues – remuneration
– and challenge the dominance of this subject as evidenced by the fact that the Remuneration Reports of the top FTSE 100 companies average 27 pages or 45% of the Corporate
Governance Reports of those companies.

In this report, we look at the breakdown of non-executive and executive director appointments and, as we have done in past reports, list the individuals behind those numbers. We also look at the gender diversity numbers so we can continue to report on that trend. And for the first time we try to assess the impact of the Government backed Parker Review in 2017 on ethnic diversity in the UK boardrooms. Unlike gender diversity, however, ethnic diversity is not binary and so difficult to assess and, other than the Parker Review Committee, lacks the protagonists and lobbyists to beat the drum loudly enough.

I have been in the privileged position to discuss race and diversity in all its forms with many leading Chief Executives and Chairs. One thing that always struck me was their need for a safe environment. An environment where they could not only challenge me but also their own concepts of race and get a better understanding of privilege in order to make their companies more attractive, better and ultimately more profitable places to work.

Following our 2018 report, we published quarterly updates for the first three quarters of 2019. This report will look at the Q4 appointments, give a summary of the whole of 2019 and examine some of the trends we are now seeing.

There are three standout findings discussed in some more detail in this report. First, we show with absolute clarity the success of the gender diversity movement.

The average age of the non-executive directors governing the FTSE 350 companies is 59. None of them is below the age of 30 and only a handful are even in their 30s, primarily the nonindependent shareholder appointees. For the purposes of this discussion we are excluding 29 year old Cally Price who is an employee/workforce representative appointed to the Sports Direct board (more on this later). The absolute age range is 32 – 84. No one will be surprised to learn that 84% of those non-executive directors are aged between 50 and 70. One hundred and twenty-eight of them are in their 70s and six are in their 80s. The female NED’s average 57 years and the males 60.