The Guardian newspaper reported last week that a proposal requiring at least 30% of bank directors to be female was under consideration by European policymakers as part of the fourth capital requirements directive. A more recent report in the Financial Times newspaper suggests that this is unlikely and notes the opposition of the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, for quotas at the current time. The Financial Times also reports that an early draft of the Directive proposed limits on the number of directorships held by bank directors.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Europe: mandatory gender quotas for bank boards?
The Guardian newspaper reported last week that a proposal requiring at least 30% of bank directors to be female was under consideration by European policymakers as part of the fourth capital requirements directive. A more recent report in the Financial Times newspaper suggests that this is unlikely and notes the opposition of the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, for quotas at the current time. The Financial Times also reports that an early draft of the Directive proposed limits on the number of directorships held by bank directors.
Interesting that there is mention of limits on directorships held by directors on bank boards. This is not a new issue and also something that would appear to be more of a problem for main land European Banks than UK based ones.
ReplyDeleteAlthough data is still coming through to use the example of the Royal Bank of Scotland from 2006-2011 there was only an average of 1.4 interlocks held by all the members of the board over the five year period; and only in 2006 was there an average of 1 interlock per director. The next 4 years there was less than 1 interlock per director (0.6; 0; 0; 0 respectively)