The Wiki entry on Grey Global starts with this:

“Grey Group is a global advertising and marketing agency with headquarters in New York City,^[1] and 432 offices in 96 countries, operating in 154 cities.^[2] It is organized into four geographical units: North America; Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.^[3] ”

Grey’s global CEO Laura Maness has just stepped down as CEO, after a three-year stint. A piece in the industry publication Campaign is here. An extract:

“Grey will not appoint a new global CEO. Instead, the agency is shifting to a co-leadership model. Gabriel Schmitt, global chief creative officer, and Jason Kahner, global chief client officer, will jointly lead Grey.”

The bottom line? The female CEO of a global agency was judged to be of no more value to the organisation (maybe less) than one of its receptionists.

Emma Walmsley took over as CEO of GSK plc in 2017. Last week she collected $16 million in total pay. It is inconceivable that such a disastrous male CEO would have survived for so long. A piece in today’s Financial Times by a woman says “she struggled to win investor confidence for her efforts to reinvigorate the UK drugmaker.” She demonstrably failed to improve the company’s fortunes and struggled to win investor confidence? Might the two be linked, or is it the fault of the patriarchy?

In March 2017 the share price of GSK plc was £1,707.51. Today, it’s £1,536.85, a drop of 11.1%. GSK has long been a FTSE100 company. Since March 2017 the value of FTSE100 companies as a whole have risen by 30%.

A piece in today’s Guardian fails to mention what a disaster Walmsley has been. The start of the piece takes up the remainder of this blog piece:

“The pharmaceutical group GSK has announced the surprise departure of its chief executive, Emma Walmsley, after eight years in the top job.

Walmsley, who has run the FTSE 100 company since 2017, will step down from the board at the end of this year, and remain at the business until her notice period ends on 30 September 2026.

She said in a statement: “2026 is a pivotal year for GSK to define its path for the decade ahead, and I believe the right moment for new leadership.

“As CEO, you hope to leave the company you love stronger than you found it and prepare for seamless succession. I’m proud to have done both – and to have created Haleon, a new world-leader in consumer health.

“Today, GSK is a biopharma innovator, with far stronger momentum and prospects than nine years ago.”

An interesting piece on Quillette.

Enjoy.

We recently posted a piece with the snappy title The Diversity Project (chair: Helena Morrissey) commissions a study (leader: Professor Alex Edmans) to assess the investment impact of diversity of thought and have since researched the online output of Professor Edmans, an economist who is professor of finance at London Business School and Mercers’ School Memorial Emeritus Professor of Business at Gresham College. If you take nothing else from this blog piece, it should be my recommendation that you catch a fascinating podcast interview, Is DEI built on dodgy data? (October 2024, 58 minutes).

The biography on his website is here (is it just me, or are professors looking very young these days, like policemen?). The Policy and Practice page is here, with links to some of his articles including Is There Really A Business Case For Diversity? (Medium, 2021) and No, boardroom diversity does not mean higher profits (Telegraph, 2021) and Is diversity actually good for business? (Spectator, 2024).

Edmans is the author of May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It. The hardback edition (£14.99) and Kindle edition (£9.99) were published last April, the paperback edition (£10.99) will be published next April.

There are plenty of video and audio files on YouTube of Edmans, here. They include Do Diverse Companies Really Perform Better? (Sacred Cows, 2024) and May Contain Lies (Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2024).

An interesting article by Tara O’Connor on the FT Adviser website.

In 2012 I gave evidence to House of Commons and House of Lords inquiries of the causal link – already well-established by then – of the causal link between increasing gender diversity on boards and corporate financial DECLINE. The evidence is here (scroll down), and consists of longitudinal studies, the only possible source of evidence of a causal link. To the best of my knowledge, no mainstream media outlets in the world have ever reported on that causal link.

Helena Morrissey needs no introduction to followers of this website. Our many blog posts on her since we launched in 2012 are here. I doubt that there’s another person in the world who has been so influential in driving “more women on boards” initiaitives over many years, or who has been so closely associated with DEI initiatives in the business world. She’s the chair of The Diversity Project, which proudly declares in large letters on its home page:

“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is not only a social obligation, it’s a business imperative in the Investment and Savings Industry.”

In 2012 I gave evidence to House of Commons and House of Lords inquiries of the causal link – already well-established by then – of the causal link between increasing gender diversity on boards and corporate financial DECLINE. The evidence is here (scroll down).

I shall be emailing Tara O’Connor, inviting her to ask Helena Morrissey whether – after so many years – she has evidence from longitudinal studies of a causal link between increasing gender diversity on corporate boards and enhanced financial performance, and if so, to provide it to us for consideration. I’ll copy the email to the newsdesk at FT Adviser, as well as Professor Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, who will lead the study.

As far as I know, the FT has been silent on the aforementioned causal link for 12+ years. Isn’t it about time they revealed the facts of the matter to their readers?

Ridiculous. As followers of this blog know, even back in 2012 plenty of evidence existed to demonstrate a causal link between increasing gender diversity on boards and corporate financial DECLINE. I presented it that year to House of Commons and House of Lords inquiries.

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Since launching C4MB in 2012, I haven’t seen any signs of resistance from businesses or business organizations to the drive for more women on boards. Indeed, they’ve often been the keenest on the mad direction of travel. So you can probably imagine my excitement at this piece in today’s Sunday Telegraph, sent by Jeff. The start of the piece:

Rules demanding that companies report gender diversity and net zero targets are damaging Britain’s competitiveness, regulators have been warned.

Two influential advisory groups to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), composed of a host of City heavyweights, said that the “comply or explain” regime has become too rigid.

In a joint response to the FCA’s primary markets review, they said: “The ‘comply or explain’ regime has in reality become ‘comply or else’ and, as such, we believe that it is acting as a constraint on the discretion and efficacy of boards as the delegated managers of issuers.

“This is ultimately to the detriment of the UK when compared to competitor jurisdictions.”

The two advisory groups are the Joint Listing Authority Advisory Panel and the Markets Practitioner Panel. I shall be contacting both organizations, but in the meantime I’ve left the following comments (the article has attracted 300+ comments since it was published less than five hours ago).

The drive for greater gender diversity on boards was based on a lie, that companies could expect better financial results if they appointed more women onto their boards. In 2012 I presented evidence (from numerous longitudinal studies) to House of Commons and House of Lords inquiries. The evidence showed a causal link between increasing gender diversity on boards and corporate fnancial DECLINE. That evidence:

https://c4mb.uk/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/

I’ve challenged many high-profile proponents of “more women on boards” to provide evidence of a causal link with improved performance, and they’ve never come up with anything. The most recent challenges, last December, included a challenge of Helena Morrissey, founder of The 30% Club in 2010:

https://c4mb.uk/2022/12/14/women-on-boards-our-public-challenge-of-four-leading-proponents-2/

It is time to end the “women on boards” scam.

Mike Buchanan

CAMPAIGN FOR MERIT IN BUSINESS

http://c4mb.uk

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Another day, another woman falsely claiming that appointing more women to corporate boards will improve profitability. Her article was published by BusinessWorld today.

I registered with the publication then posted some comments, which haven’t yet appeared. I assume comments go automatically to moderators, and they won’t publish my comments. So here they are:

Complete nonsense. Corellation is not evidence of causation. In 2012 I presented to a House of Commons inquiry some of the then already copious literature showing a causal link between increasing gender diversity on boards and corporate financial DECLINE:

Increasing gender diversity on corporate boards leads to declines in financial performance: the evidence

I know of no studies showing a causal link with financial performance improvement. I’ve challenged many leading proponents of ‘more women on boards’ to show me studies indicating the causal link they claim, and not one has risen to the challenge.

The reason for the correlation is probably that more profitable companies are more inclined (and able) to engage in social engineering exercises such as putting more women on their boards. When a beautiful young woman marries a much older rich man, we don’t claim that beautiful women make men rich, do we?

Mike Buchanan

CAMPAIGN FOR MERIT IN BUSINESS

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