In what has been called a “breakout year” for gender diversity on U.S. public company boards, corporate America showed increasing enthusiasm for diversity-promoting measures during 2016. Recent studies have demonstrated the greater profitability of companies whose boards are meaningfully diverse. In many cases, companies have collaborated with investors to increase the number of women on their boards, and a number of prominent corporate leaders have publicly encouraged companies to prioritize diversity. The Business Roundtable, a highly influential group of corporate executives, recently released a statement that explicitly links board diversity with board performance in the two key areas of oversight and value creation. Likewise, a group of corporate leaders—including Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, Jeff Immelt, and Larry Fink, among others—published their own “Commonsense Principles of Corporate Governance,” an open letter highlighting diversity as a key element of board composition.
Momentum toward gender parity on boards is building, particularly in the top tier of public corporations. Pension funds from several states have taken strong stances intended to encourage meaningful board diversity at the 25 percent to 30 percent level. Last year, then-SEC Chair Mary Jo White cited the correlation of board diversity with improved company performance and identified board diversity as an important issue for the Commission, signaling that it may be a priority for regulators going forward. Boards should take note of the evolving best practices in board composition and look for ways to improve, from a diversity standpoint, their candidate search, director nomination, and board refreshment practices. We recommend that boards include this issue as part of an annual discussion on director succession, similar to the annual discussion regarding CEO succession.
