Tesco chairman retracts remarks about ‘endangered white men’
Tesco chairman John Allan backtracked on his comments about the disadvantages for white men in corporate boardrooms as critics urged greater diversity of the retailer’s directors and some shoppers said they would boycott the UK’s biggest supermarket chain.
“The point I was seeking to make was that successful boards must be active in bringing together a diverse and representative set of people,” Allan said on Saturday on Tesco’s website. “There is still much more to be done but now is a good time for women to put themselves forward for nonexecutive director roles.”
At a conference in London on Thursday, Allan had said white men were an “endangered species” on boards and had to “work twice as hard”. Appearing on a panel about aspiring nonexecutive directors, he said women with an ethnic background were “in an extremely propitious period”. Allan later said the comments were meant to be funny.
Investors and government officials are demanding greater diversity in company management, as women still hold fewer senior positions and earn less than their male counterparts.
Recruiter Egon Zehnder said 29% of directors appointed in the UK in 2016 were female, the lowest proportion since 2012. Nine of Tesco’s 11 board members are white men.
Boardroom gender representation might be tackled at Tesco’s annual general meeting, said Oliver Parry, the head of corporate governance policy at the Institute of Directors.
“You won’t find many investors that don’t want a more diverse board,” he said, referring to Tesco. “Companies have got to be more representative of the societies in which they operate.”
Allan said he had always been an advocate for diversity and regretted if his remarks gave “the opposite impression”.
Comments about diversity and industry can be perilous for corporate executives. Kevin Roberts, the former executive chairman of Publicis’s Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency, resigned in August 2016 after he told Business Insider the debate about gender diversity in advertising was “over”, touching off a firestorm. Publicis’s chairman placed Roberts on leave a day after the article was published and said his comments did not uphold the company’s policy.
After Allan’s comments at the Retail Week conference appeared in UK newspapers on Saturday, Women’s Equality party leader Sophie Walker tweeted “#BoycottTesco”.
COMPANIES HAVE GOT TO BE MORE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SOCIETIES IN WHICH THEY OPERATE
The call for a boycott comes as the retailer is recovering from the effects of an accounting scandal and as it seeks to bring back customers who defected to discounters Aldi and Lidl after it raised prices to protect profit margins during the global financial crisis.