April 19, 2018 Powerful investors are pushing for more women on corporate boards – Yahoo Finance

Bruce Goldfarb, the CEO of Okapi Partners, advises activists in their campaigns when it comes to evaluating current boards and putting together dissident board slates. Nowadays, diversity matters to the largest shareholders.

“We are in an environment now where the largest shareholders are saying, ‘We want a diverse board. We are concerned with gender diversity. We are concerned with having people of color on the board,” Goldfarb said during his panel.

One of the issues he pointed to is a long tenure, with some directors serving extensive stints on boards.

“I’ll be the first to talk about being pale, male, and stale today,” Goldfarb said. “But that becomes the issue. Part of an electable slate is identifying people of talent, who solve the issues, who are truly diverse in terms of gender, race, skills, and expertise to create that electable slate.”

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