Glencore fills its gender gap
GLENCORE will shake off its status as the last FTSE 100 firm with no women board members by appointing Canadian mining veteran Patrice Merrin as a non-executive.
The appointment, which the Mail understands could be announced as soon as today, ends a two-and-a-half year search for a female board member in the male-heavy world of mining.
Campaigners for gender equality in the boardroom hailed it as a ‘landmark’ moment for British business, three years after Lord Davies of Abersoch set a target of 25pc female representation by 2015.
The appointment will also mark a significant turning point for the commodities giant, whose former chairman Simon Murray scandalised the City by saying he was wary of hiring women in case they became pregnant.
Merrin, 65, has a long mining heritage, having served as chief executive of coal miner Luscar and chief operating officer of the natural resources firm Sherritt International. She is still a director of Canadian platinum and palladium mining firm Stillwater and has also been a member of several panels on climate change and sustainability in Canada.
Glencore first stated its intention to hire a woman in February 2012, and has blamed its mega-merger with Xstrata – and the resulting boardroom shake-up – for delaying the process. The hold-up attracted criticism from Business secretary Vince Cable, who said earlier this year that it was ‘simply not credible’ that Glencore could not find a suitable woman.
Glencore said in May that it would make an appointment by the end of the year, with nominations chief Peter Grauer and headhunting firm Egon Zehnder leading the search.
Merrin, picturedbelow, fulfils two of three criteria that Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg was determined should be met, other than gender.
She boasts extensive mining experience, and her expertise in Canada is also a good fit, given that Glen core has vastly increased its footprint there with the acquisition of Xstrata’s nickel assets and grain business Viterra. She has no senior experience in agricultural commodities, an area of knowledge Glasenberg has previously said he was keen to add to the board. Advocates f or more women FTSE 100 board members hailed a landmark in the history of the City of London, three years after f ormer Standard Chartered chief Lord Davies set his 25pc target.
Professor Susan Vinnicombe, author of the Cranfield University Female FTSE Board Report, said it showed the City was making good progress towards his target. ‘This will finally close the circle on all-male boards among FTSE 100,’ she said last night.
At the current trajectory, Lord Davies’s 25pc target should be reached by December 2015, beating his deadline by a hair’s breadth.
But she said that while the overall boardroom balance was improving, women are still woefully under-represented among executive directors, at just 7pc of the total. ‘The bigger and more challenging part is nurturing and developing our executive women, of which we have so few.’
‘That requires us to interrogate at every level how we define talent and how it is that women are systematically overlooked.’
Cable’s criticism of Glencore came after Chilean miner Antofagasta appointed a female board member, leaving Glencore the last firm in the FTSE 100 with an all-male board. Former Anglo American boss Cynthia Carroll was named among possible appointments but i s not thought to have been a serious contender.