69 directors join boards of listed companies in 8 months

Thirty-eight (38) listed firms on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) announced different changes to their boards in the first eight months in 2019, leading to the appointments of 69 individuals in different capacities, four institutions while ten other individuals announced their exit from companies’ boards. On the average, most of the board members have at least 20 years of work experience.

Between January and August 2019, the companies that made changes to their boards are 11 Plc, Access Bank, African Alliance, AIICO Insurance, AXA Mansard, Berger Paints, Cadbury Nigeria, Conoil, CWG, Dangote Cement & Sugar and Ecobank.

Others are Sunu Group, Ellah Lakes, eTranzact, Fidelity Bank, Forte Oil, Interlinked Technologies, Zenith Bank, among others.

Among those appointed, two are acting managing directors, a chief compliance officer, seven chief financial officers, four company secretaries, two chief operating officers and a deputy managing director.

Others include twenty executive directors, two external auditors, three independent non-executive directors, fourteen managing directors and chief executive officers, a company’s registrars as well as fifteen non-executive directors.

On the contrary, six managing directors and chief executive officers were among the ten individuals that announced their exit from boards of companies during the reference period. Further, two were chief financial officers (CFOs), a director and a non-executive director.

Among those appointed, seventeen of the new board members are females, representing 25 percent of the total board appointments just as males constituted 75 percent of the board appointments year to date.

According to the data on female seats on boards by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the average percentage of women on boards of companies in OECD countries was 22.3 percent as at 2017. In France, 43.4 percent of board members of companies domiciled in that country were females in 2017. It was 43 percent in Iceland; 42.1 percent in Norway and 36.3 percent in Sweden.

Estonia,7.4 percent; Chile, 8.2 percent; Japan, 5.3 percent and Korea, 2.1 percent have the least female memberships of the boards of companies as at 2017.

“Mounting stakeholders’ expectations, challenges faced by companies to operate under fluctuating economic conditions, pressures of globalisation and increased regulatory requirements have brought the quality of performance of the Boards of Directors under greater scrutiny. Boards have recognized that it would be important for them to continually assess how effectively they are performing their roles against the objectives and the goals they have set for themselves”, Deloitte said in one of its publications.

In terms of qualification, Ainojie Alex Irune, an executive director at Oando Plc, has the highest academic qualification among the new board appointments from January to August. He got his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Nottingham in 2009.

Twenty three (23) new board members have masters of business administration (MBA), four new board members with masters of science degrees, while two new appointees have masters of law (LLM) degrees. One of the new appointees, Folashope Babasola Aiyesimoju, who was appointed as the managing director and chief executive officer of UAC Nigeria is a CFA holder while Ebenezer Onyeagwu, the new group managing director of Zenith Bank Plc, is a fellow, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).

The boards of directors of companies are statutorily required for skills and expertise, corporate governance, credibility, strategic direction, legitimacy, as well as for independence and accountability. The way a company’s board is composed usually has impact on its corporate governance.

TELIAT SULE