The WSJ reported that BlackRock affirmed plans to press about 300 companies that have fewer than two women directors for disclosure on their board and employee gender diversity approach and timeline for improvement:
BlackRock, for example, plans to write to about 300 companies in the Russell 1000 that have fewer than two women on the board to ask them to disclose their approach to boardroom and employee diversity, BlackRock governance head Michelle Edkins said Thursday at a Santa Clara University event in California. The firm plans to ask them to set a time frame in which they will improve their diversity. State Street also pressed its portfolio companies to improve their boardroom diversity in 2017.
"It is a conversation and we have an agenda and we have several things we want to discuss," Ms. Edkins said of the firm's meetings with companies. "It is absolutely not a thing that we do over bottles of wine. If they're lucky, they get a really nasty cup of BlackRock coffee."
As previously reported, consistent with its 2017-18 engagement priorities, BlackRock supported eight of nine board diversity-related shareholder proposals last year, and also voted against Nominating Committee members at five of those companies for their alleged failure to address board diversity concerns expressed by investors. CEO Larry Fink's 2018 annual letter to CEOs (which we reported on last week here) reiterated BlackRock's focus on board diversity, inclusive of gender diversity.
This post was among several institutional investor developments that we reported in this week's Society Alert!