Aston Martin’s first woman in the driving seat
by Rachel Millard A CORPORATE high-flyer who gave up her job to look after her children has been appointed as Aston Martin’s first female chairman.
Penny Hughes will take over the James Bond car maker when it goes public on the London Stock Exchange later this year.
But the 59-year-old will be just one of seven female chairmen in the FTSE100 – if Aston Martin makes the index as planned – meaning there are still more chairmen called John than women bosses.
Aston – which is owned by investment firms from Italy and Kuwait – is planing to go public with an expected value of £5bn, in what will be the first float for decades by a British car maker.
Hughes first found success when she was made head of Coca-Cola’s UK and Ireland business aged just 33, but she quit the £250,000-a-year post to look after her two children.
She has since held a string of nonexecutive posts at UK companies, and stepped down from the board of RBS in May where she had previously set bosses’ pay – including a controversial £963,000 bonus for the bailed-out bank’s then chief executive Stephen Hester in 2011.
The Aston job will be Hughes’s third current chairmanship, alongside The Gym Group, where she earns £130,000, and IQ Student Accommodation, where her salary is not disclosed. She also takes home £64,605 on the board of clothing company Superdry. Salaries at Aston Martin have not been revealed.
Ann Francke, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, said that female chairmen typically earn 77pc less than men in the role. She added: ‘Penny Hughes is one of the very few women to reach the pinnacle of the “glass pyramid” in the UK. An impressive achievement. I just hope she’s going to be treated equally with her male peers when it comes to pay and conditions.’
Hughes’s third chairmanship comes amid concern over a handful of highly qualified female bosses getting top jobs as firms come under pressure to appoint more women to senior roles. The trend has become so pronounced that many investors fear some female directors may be overstretched.
Cliff Weight, of shareholder group Sharesoc, said that ‘many chairmanships might be too much for the average person, but it’s OK for someone of her calibre’.
He added: ‘You don’t find so many women with such a good track record, so there is a limited supply, unfortunately.’
Hughes oversaw the merger of Coca-Cola and Schweppes in the 1980s before being promoted to run its UK and Ireland business. She was part of Tony Blair’s Forward Strategy Unit in 2001, advising the then prime minister on policy. In an interview in 2012 she defended RBS’s decision to award Hester his bonus, saying the world’s ‘biggest corporate turnaround’ demanded big talent.
Hughes will be joined on the board by the former Fulham MP Lord Carrington, 70.
Richard Solomons, the former boss of hotel giant IHG, will be senior independent director, while Imelda Walsh will chair the pay committee.