Mellon boss appointed as global head of 30% Club
THE head of BNY Mellon’s investment division has been appointed chairman of a campaign group pushing to get more women on company boards.
Hanneke Smits, chief executive of BNY Mellon Investment Management, will become global chairman of the 30% Club, a group founded in 2010 with the
aim of making boards more diverse. Its name comes from the ambition to have at least 30pc of roles on boards and executive positions held by women.
Before joining BNY Mellon, Ms Smits founded Level 20, a not-for-profit group aimed at helping women succeed in private equity. She is also a former member of the Bank of England’s court of directors. She will take over from current chairman Ann Cairns, who recently retired from Mastercard where she had been executive vice-chairman.
Ms Smits said the role of the 30% Club was “as vital now as it was at launch”, amid concerns that many businesses are being too slow to get more women into more senior roles.
She added: “Even today, the baseline target of reaching 30pc women – either at board or senior management level – remains a stretch for many organisations throughout the world.”
Across the FTSE 100, about 40pc of board roles are held by women, but many of these are in non-executive positions, rather than senior positions such as chief financial officer and chief executive. There are only eight FTSE 100 companies with a female chief executive. These include GSK, the pharmaceutical giant headed up by Dame Emma Walmsley, and Natwest, whose chief executive is Dame Alison Rose.
A report by EY late last year criticised the “appalling” lack of progress on promoting women into executive roles.
EY’S Alison Kay said: “It is time we turn our primary attention to addressing, in an urgent way, the alarming lack of progress in gender proofing executive succession planning.”