Stanbic IBTC, SCB top Corporate Boards with women

Stanbic IBTC Asset Management and the Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) have emerged as the organisations in Nigeria with the highest representation of professional women on their corporate boards, a study by BusinessDay Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU) has shown.
These findings are contained in the about-to-be published report  “Know Your Directors: Profiles of Boards of Directors of 100 Nigerian Companies”.
The two firms led other 78 firms that have women on their boards with 44 percent women representations on their boards. Others are Sovereign Trust Insurance and Universal Insurance Plc both of which have 43 percent and 29 percent female board representation respectively.
Further analysis of the report especially when all the board members of the 100 companies are considered together, 61 percent of the directors are Non-Executive Directors, while the remaining 39 percent is shared between Executive Directors and independent Non-Executive Directors. Foreign nationals account for just 8 percent of the 100 boards considered in the report.
By gender, 81 percent of the boards are males while 19 percent are females.  Eighty percent of the Managing Directors and Chief Executive Officers of the companies that featured in the report are males while females CEOs are just 20 percent. Of the Chairmen of the Boards, 84 percent are males while 16 percent are females.
The report also shows that highly esteemed personalities such as Oba Otudeko ,Bismarck Rewane, Osaretin Afusat Demurin, Paul Kokoricha, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede and Omobola Johnson are on the boards of several companies.
Under representation of women in corporate boards has attracted attention of development institutions such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), World Bank and several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the world.

According to an AfDB 2015 report which was conducted across 12 African countries and covered 307 listed companies, 364 companies out of 2,865 listed firms, representing 12.7 percent had women on their boards. According to the continental development institution, that was 4.6 percent lower that 17.3 percent women’s representation on the boards of the 200 largest companies globally.
The AfDB report further showed that the majority of the companies in Africa have a least 1 woman board director. “However, about one-third (32.9 percent) have zero women on board, and another one-third only have female director (33.6%), so the majority of African companies have minimal women’s presence on boards” the AfDB report noted.  With respect to Nigeria, BRIU report shows that about 30 percent of the firms under our coverage have no woman on their boards.
Elsewhere, 25 percent of the boards of the largest listed firms in Europe are held by women, a report by Catalyst shows. Women board representation is 24 percent in Australia;  22 percent in Canada; 9 percent in India; 2.7 percent in Japan while 20 percent of S & P 500 directorships in the United States of America (USA) are held by women.
Experts have noted that unlocking the potential of Africa’s successful transformation requires concurrently removing barriers to   women’s leadership and participation and that the development of the continent is inherently interlinked with the  progress  of  its  women.
“We  must bring women on corporate boards through programs to fast track women through middle and senior  management in the private sector for us to break the glass ceiling. Kenya and South Africa have government mandates for women’s representation on the boards of state-owned companies, while the private sector in  Kenya, Morocco, Malawi, Nigeria and South Africa has integrated gender diversity into principles of good corporate governance.”
“A McKinsey study showed that women in business continue to face a formidable gender gap in senior-leadership positions. The barriers too are well known: a mix of cultural factors,  ingrained mind-sets, and stubborn forms of behavior, including a tendency to tap a much narrower band of  women leaders than is possible given the available talent pool. However they also showed that including at least three female board members improves the tone and responsibility of boards. Credit Suisse found a correlation between women on a company’s board of directors and improved financial performance.”
“Women’s representation on boards is not only a gender equality issue but is also a performance optimization strategy. More and more evidence shows a better gender mix among senior management is linked with better results such as greater profitability” writes Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Special Envoy on Gender, African Development Bank.

 

By TELIAT SULE