- LONDON: Britain’s government may enforce quotas to make corporate boards include more women, the head of an inquiry into the issue was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Former trade minister Mervyn Davies told a Financial Times roundtable meeting that all heads of boards should announce their goals for women on boards within the next six months and stick to them, or explain why they had not done so.
“If the institutional shareholders do not put pressure on the boards, if the headhunters don’t come up with a new talent pool, and if the chairmen don’t fix this in the next two or three years, absolutely there should be quotas,” Davies said in comments published on the newspaper’s website.
The Financial Times said women make up 12.5 percent of FTSE 100 boards, while half of companies in the FTSE 250 have no women directors.
FTSE 100 companies should aim for a least a quarter of their boardrooms to be made up of women by 2015, he said.
“This is a crisis in the boardroom of Britain and we need immediate action from a collection of people,” he said.
He was also due to publish the results of the review.