Consultation period on “Women on boards” ends and FRC publishes responses
Update 11 October 2011: The FRC has confirmed its changes to the UK Corporate Governance Code and stated that companies should apply and report on the changes with immediate effect – see this post.
The Financial Reporting Council has been running a public consultation on whether the UK Corporate Governance Code (the Code) should be amended to require the boards of listed companies to publish their gender diversity policy and report on their progress in implementing that policy. The FRC consultation followed the publication of the Davies Review on “Women on boards“; one of the recommendations of the Davies Review was that the Code should be amended in this way.
We discussed the FRC consultation in this post and the recommendations of the Davies Review in this post.
The FRC consultation closed on 29 July 2011 and the FRC has now published the responses to the consultation on its website; the responses can be read here.
Most of the responses are pretty mundane. Two that are relatively interesting are those from:
- The Association of British Insurers, which will be publishing the results of research on board effectiveness, diversity, board evaluation and succession planning in September 2011. The ABI hopes that that research will provide companies with a benchmark for best practice and will help to raise market standards.
- Claire Wilkinson, who attempts to place the debate on how best to increase the number of women on boards in a very broad social context. It is not often that the FRC is asked to consider issues around domestic violence and childhood sexual abuse.
