Subscribe to our YouTube channel for our latest videos on Leadership, Banking and Women on Boards:
Coverage of our latest ‘Women on Boards’ interview with Barclays’ Chairman, Marcus Agius, included features in Bloomberg Businessweek as well as finance.yahoo.
View the coverage on finance.yahoo.com
Barclays chairman, Marcus Agius, wants more awareness of how women are gradually reaching the top in business and achieving board positions on FTSE companies. Marcus has been talking to us about this issue and explaining how seriously Barclays feels about it:
“Diversity is central to Barclay’s citizenship agenda. We have some fantastic female role models at executive level including Maria Ramos who is Group Chief Executive of Barclays Africa with forty four thousand staff reporting to her. Valerie Soranno Keating is head of our successful Barclaycard operation. Twenty percent of the Executive Board is female. Now we are pushing for greater awareness.”
View our interview with Marcus Agius here.
Lord Davies of Abersoch, who leads the Government commissioned review into women on boards, also wanted to discuss the current situation with us:
“The good news is that 25% of all new board appointments to the FTSE are women. We don’t like quotas as we need to self-regulate but the more diverse the team the better the company performance.”
“Beyond financial services there is a strong talent pool of women, but headhunters need to identify them and chairmen need to interview them.”
View our interview with Lord Davies here.
Cranfield University has just brought out its 2012 Female FTSE board report and co-author Professor Susan Vinnicombe says:
“The past twelve months have seen a significant amount of global activity around diversifying boards.If the momentum we have seen since the Lord Davies review continues, we could achieve 30% women on boards in less than four years.”
Following our latest leadership event at the Gherkin on banking, our filmed interview with Angela Knight, Chief Executive of The British Bankers Association was featured in The Mail on Sunday’s Financial Mail Women’s Forum. There were comments reported from Angela Knight and also a link to the interview.
Welcome to our new blog where you will find out news about who we’re talking to, interviewing and writing about in the media, healthcare, technology and financial services industries.
Currently,the banking industry following the crisis retains its ‘bad boy’ image and there may be an impending recruitment problem. Recently we interviewed the Chief Executive of the British Bankers Association, Angela Knight, CBE, about how the banking crisis has affected the application of serious contenders for board applications. Her view was that women particularly might be put off coming forward, while a poor image of the industry persists. View the interview on our website.
In an article in the Financial Times, Sharleen Goff reports on the banking recruitment crisis too in her article ‘A battered sector seeks reinforcements’ 2/2/2012. But despite this, she says the banks are” likely to need people – probably contractors – to help them identify and drive through efficiencies”. Digital banking is going to be a key area – according to analysts – with new services appearing such as ‘mobile payments’. Sharleen suggests that rather than hire people with traditional banking expertise, opportunities will appear for media professionals who have grown up in the internet age.
