Wednesday 29 August 2012

Women in the Chair ....

Helen Alexander UBM
Helen Alexander UBM
The four women in the chair of FTSE 350 boards are an impressively select group leading just 1.14% of companies in the 350 index.  Together they are leading the way in increasing the representation of women on British boards.

The group - Dame Helen Alexander UBM, Anita Frew Victrex, Colette Bowe Electra Private Equity and Alison Carnwarth Land Securities - have dizzying portfolios in which they combine not only multiple directorships but also a wide range of trusteeships on university, cultural and charity boards.  Anita Frew, for example, has been on the board of the Donmar and Gate Theatres and Helen Alexander is Chancellor of Southampton University and both combine all of this with being mothers.

Colette Bowe
Colette Bowe
The group's portfolios undoubtedly demonstrate phenomenal networking powers but these women also share real longevity of service and, for want of a better word, "stickability" in certain areas of their careers - they are not just "business butterflies" who have flitted from one non-exec role to another.  Helen Alexander joined the Economist Group in 1985 and was CEO of the group for 11 years until she became Vice President of the CBI.  Colette Bowe was a civil servant at the DTI for over 12 years.  Anita Frew has served on the Victrex board for over 10 years and Alison Carnwarth - who is the only woman Chair of a FTSE 100 company - on the Land Securities board for over 8 years.

Alison Carnwarth
Alison Carnwarth
Interestingly, the four have combined this "stickability" with the confidence to make some very big and critical career changes.  Colette Bowe's was perhaps the most dramatic, leaving the civil service after becoming caught up in the scandal of the Westland Affair to work in the city as first as a regulator as CEO of the Personal Investment Authority and then Executive Chair of Robert Fleming Asset Management. Anita Frew had risen to the top of the financial sector as Head of Investment at Scottish Provident before joining the marketing group WPP as Director of Corporate Development.  As Colette Bowe has made clear such shifts are by no means easy - in her case in the full glare of the media, anything but  "At the time it felt awful. Some things can be so awful they seem unreal." (Guardian 2011) - but senior achievement in very different sectors has added to their authority as Chairs.

Anita FrewSuch impressive role models in their own right, these women are now also leading the way in promoting women to boards with the four boards they chair having much better than average representation of women with three of the four over the 30% target set by campaigning groups and the fourth Land Securities only just shy of this target at 28.5%:

  • Electra                3 of 6 directors    50%
  • Victrex                2 of 5 directors    40%
  • UBM                   2 of 6 directors    33%
  • Land Securities    2 of 7 directors    28.5%


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