FTSE Women Leaders Review 2022 Report published

The FTSE Women Leaders Review has published its first report on improving gender balance in FTSE leadership. It highlights progress across the FTSE 350 for women leaders and sets out four new recommendations.

The Review is a new five-year independent review to monitor the representation of women among leaders of FTSE 350 companies. It was set up in November 2021 following the publication of the final report under the Hampton-Alexander Review (see our blog post here). The Hampton-Alexander Review had set a target of having 33% of all board and senior leadership positions held by women by the end of 2020.

The 2022 Report highlights that companies across the FTSE 350 continue to make progress in the drive for gender-diverse boards and leadership. Amongst FTSE 100 companies, 85 of them have met the 33% women on boards target and 44 have met the 33% women in leadership target (i.e. combined executive committee and direct reports to the executive committee). For FTSE 250 companies, 193 companies have met the board target and 65 have met the leadership target.

As the 33% targets have not been met by all relevant companies and across the FTSE 350 the number of women CEOs remains low, the Review has adopted four new recommendations:

• 40% of FTSE 350 board and leadership positions should be held by women by the end of 2025;
• FTSE 350 companies should have at least one woman appointed as chair, senior independent director, CEO or CFO by the end of 2025;
• stakeholders should have best-practice guidance or other mechanisms in place to encourage those FTSE 350 companies which have not met the pre-existing 33% targets to do so; and
• the top 50 private companies in the UK by sales should also adopt the targets. This could cover entities such as private equity owned companies, partnerships and family owned companies.

The first two recommendations track the proposals the FCA set out in its consultation on board diversity in July 2021 (see our blog post here). The FCA is yet to publish its response to this consultation paper.