Only 13 percent of their board nominees were women last year.
Activist hedge fund managers are too passive when it comes to gender equality.
Of the 143 board members who were nominated by activist hedge funds in 2018, just 19, or 13 percent, were women, according to a new study from Activist Insight. That compares with about a third of all board members who were nominated last year. The 13 percent does appear to be a bit of an improvement. In early 2016, Bloomberg reported that just 5 percent of all activist nominees had been women during the previous five years. Still, in a year when there was a heightened awareness about the long-standing inequality of women in the workplace, activist investors could have been expected to make a bigger push for board equality.
That didn’t happen. Carl Icahn, for instance, nominated 18 directors in 2018 — the most of any activist hedge fund manager. The number of whom were women: zero. Nelson Peltz, who runs Trian Fund Management, nominated and placed three directors on corporate boards. None were women.
In all, just 16 out of the 60 investment funds tracked by Activist Insight nominated women to be directors. And of those, only three funds nominated more than one woman to be a director last year, according to the study. Legion Partners was the most, with four female nominees out of 12. Starboard Value and Elliott Management tied for second place with two women each.
www.bloomberg.com
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