The president of the CBI has called for City investors to urge companies to appoint more women to their boards to improve corporate performance and avoid the introduction of mandatory quotas.
Sir Roger Carr, speaking last night at a seminar hosted by lobby group The 30% Club, which wants to raise the number of women on boards to three in ten, said: “This has been a process of awareness, then engagement, followed by action. The shareholder community is a very important part of this and if they don’t ask about it then this won’t a subject of executive concern.”
Sir Roger, who is also chairman of the British Gas owner Centrica, added that more diverse boards often performed better and that it was important for those in a position of authority to realise this sooner rather than later.
He warned that gender quotas, which are under consideration by the European Union and have been introduced in Norway, would undermine the exercise of getting more women on boards, given the need to put merit first.
“If quotas are introduced here it would be a very sad outcome, bad for women, bad for business,” he told an audience of senior City figures at Cass Business School.
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Sir Roger, who said awareness of and momentum behind the gender issue was rising in the City, was speaking on a panel alongside the Lloyds chairman Sir Win Bischoff, a fellow founder of The 30% Club, the Mitie chief executive Ruby McGregor-Smith and Martin Gilbert, chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management.
Mrs McGregor-Smith, who runs the FTSE 250 outsourcer, which also has a female finance director, called for more businessess to make changes to support women developing their careers if they take time out to raise children: “If we can do it, why can’t others? It’s time to be seriously brave about it.”
The 30% Club says that FTSE 100 companies have only 12.5 per cent female representation on their boards.