Women Board Candidates Have Chance To Shine At UK Event - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Fifty women board candidates will meet more than 20 chairmen and directors at the first Professional Boards Forum event in the UK, organised by Elin Hurvenes and Jane Scott.

• Women occupy less than 12% of FTSE 100 directorships.

• Women have been offered just 11.6% of non-executive appointments in the past year, according to BoardEx, a sponsor of the event.

• Only 6.6% of non-executive directors across all quoted companies are female.

• Saying that there are not the women candidates is no excuse. Greg Wood, co-founder of BoardEx, claims to have a database of 12,000 “highly capable women executives with an immense amount to offer, currently holding executive positions in global organisations but yet to take on their first non-executive role”. (BoardEx has compiled a list of more than 250,000 directors, largely in Europe and North America).

• Wood told WOMEN-omics that companies are increasingly looking for diverse candidates for the board. “Gender is one of the variables,” he said. There are other variables such as ethnicity. Also, companies want people with diverse experience. “They might want someone with experience of working in Asia rather than solely being in the UK.”

Source: Getting the women on board by Alison Maitland, Financial Times, April 29, 2009

The following chairmen and senior directors will be attending the Professional Boards Forum event on May 5, 2009:

THE CHAIRMEN

• Sir Philip Hampton, J Sainsbury plc and RBS plc
• Sir John Bond, Vodafone plc
• Sir Rob Margetts, Legal & General plc
• Roger Carr, Centrica plc and Cadbury plc
• Alison Carnwath, Land Securities Group plc and MF Global Inc
• John Buchanan, Smith and Nephew plc
• Cristina Stenbeck, Kinnevik
• Sir Peter Gershon, Tale & Lyle plc and Premier Farnell plc
• Michael Grade, ITV plc
• Lesley Knox, Alliance Trust plc
• Norman Murray, Cairn Energy
• David Reid, Tesco plc
• Donald Brydon, Smiths Group plc
• Victoria Mitchell, Berkeley Group Holdings plc
• Nick Prest, Aveva Group plc
• Simon Oliver, Dairy Crest Group plc
• Patrick Burgess, Liberty International plc
• Ian Powell, PwC UK
• Roger Matthews, Mitie Group plc

SENIOR DIRECTORS

• Simon Rowlands, Partner, Cinven Limited
• Heather Rabbatts CBE, Deputy Chairman, Millwall Holdings plc
• Tim Cobbold, CEO, Chloride plc
• Donald Mackenzie, Managing Partner, CVC Capital Partners
• Gary Bullard, NED, Chloride plc
• Mark Yallop, Group COO, ICAP plc
• Fraser Duncan, MD Portfolio Business, Terra Firma Capital Partners plc