26 / 72
19
The Female FTSE Board Report 2016
In terms of the particular executive roles that the women have, six are CEOs and ten are CFOs/GFDs.
The remainder are in a variety of roles ranging from COO, Regional CEO, Sales and Marketing, Chief Risk
Officer, Human Resources and Group Transformation Director. Later on in this report we look at all the
roles filled by women on the Executive Committees of the FTSE 100 companies. The lack of women in
executive directorships is a reflection of inadequate talent management and promotion practices, and the
choices women make in their careers (which in turn are influenced by organizational talent management
and promotion processes). It is interesting to note that of the 20 companies with women in executive
directorships 16 of them have 25% or more women on their boards, which indicates a positive link
between appointing women into both NED and ED roles. In order to improve the number of women in
the executive pipeline, effort must be invested in all these areas.
There are now four women holding the Chairman role in the FTSE 100.
They are:
––
Dame Alison Carnwath – Land Securities
––
Susan Kilsby – Shire
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Sarah Bates – St. James’s Place
––
Manjit Wolstenholme – Provident Financial
Although this number is still very low, we are pleased to see an increase in the number of women holding
Senior Independent Director (SID) positions, as this role is often considered to be the ‘Chairman-in-
waiting’ role. There are 12 women holding 13 SID roles in the FTSE 100. They are:
––
Vivienne Cox – Pearson
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Ann Fudge – Unilever
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Rachel Lomax – HSBC
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Ruth Markland – Sage
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Christine Morin-Postel – British American Tobacco
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Orna Ni-Chionna – Royal Mail
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Anne Quinn – Mondi
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Gillian Sheldon – Capita
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Nicole Seligman – WPP
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Baroness Shriti Vadera – BHP Billiton
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Johanna Waterous – Rexam and RSA Insurance Group
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Julia Wilson – Legal & General Group
3.1.2 Trends in Board Composition
Whilst the average FTSE 100 board size is 10.7 directors, we see that the size of boards varies
tremendously from 7 to 25.
TABLE 3: RANGE OF FTSE 100 BOARD SIZE
Size of Board
No. of Companies
0
5
10
15
20
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
19
25
FTSE 100 Companies