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London-listed companies are more profitable when women make up more than one in three executive roles, according to new research.

Listed firms where at least one-third of the bosses are women have a profit margin more than 10 times greater than those without, it suggests.

Of the 350 largest companies listed, just 14 are led by women, according to gender diversity business The Pipeline.

15% of companies in the FTSE 350 have no female executives at all.

The group’s co-founder Lorna Fitzsimons said having more women in the decision-making room means businesses are better able to understand their customers.

The Pipeline’s Women Count 2020 report “shows the stark difference in net profit margins of companies that have diverse gender leaderships compared to those who do not,” she said.

The Pipeline says London-listed companies with no women on their executive committees have a net profit of 1.5%, whereas those with more than one in three women at that level reach 15.2% net profit margin.

The report also points out that in the largest 100 London-listed companies, the total number of female chief executives is the same as the number of bosses named Peter – six.

When it comes to chief financial officers in those firms, fewer than two out of 10 are women, while men make up 96% of investment managers.

The sectors with the lowest number of women in executive roles are construction and retail.

“If you look at retail, entry level jobs are usually 80% women,” Ms Fitzsimons said. “But they don’t make it to the executive level.”

Former Prime Minister Theresa May, who contributed to the report, said there can be no good explanation for the massive underrepresentation of women at the top of British business.

“Every single male CEO who looks around his boardroom table to see nine out of 10 male faces staring back at him needs to ask himself what he is doing to make his business one which his daughter or granddaughter can get on in,” she wrote.

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VANDA MURRAY

Vanda Murray OBE led Blick PLC in the early 2000s. She currently chairs the board at Marshalls PLC, a FTSE 250 construction firm.

While she welcomes recent moves to encourage women to make up 30% of company boards, she says it’s in executive, decision-making roles where women are still underrepresented.

“There are talented females out there, no-one could really argue against this,” she said.

Leadership groups with people from mixed backgrounds, ethnicity and gender do better because “they challenge more, and they have more discussion and debate and that leads to better decision-making,” she said.

Ms Murray said Marshalls has a female HR director, but the rest of the executive committee members are men.

“We have plans in place. We have talent management programmes and training and development so that we can make sure the younger female managers come through.”

July
26, 2020

2 min read

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Black, Asian and minority ethnic figures (BAME) are set to feature on British notes and coins for the first time.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is considering proposals from a campaign group for legal tender to be more inclusive, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

Mr Sunak has asked the Royal Mint to come up with new designs honouring BAME figures.

Military nurse Mary Seacole and spy Noor Inayat Khan are being considered.

The former Conservative parliamentary candidate Zehra Zaidi is leading the Banknotes of Colour campaign.

She says no non-white person has ever been featured on British currency.

“Who we have on our legal tender, our notes and our coins, builds into a narrative of who we think we are as a nation,” she told BBC News.

“People from all backgrounds helped build Britain.”

BAME people who have served the nation – such as military figures and nurses – have been put forward for the proposed set of coins.

Two years ago Ms Zaidi started a petition for the British World War Two secret agent Noor Inayat Khan, who was also a descendant of Indian royalty, to be featured on a coin, but the campaign fell on deaf ears.

“She was the first female radio operator to be sent to enemy-occupied France,” said Ms Zaidi.

“She was one of only four women in history to receive the George Cross.”

The Jamaican-born nurse Mary Seacole is also being considered. She was born in the Caribbean to a Scottish father and a Jamaican mother.

At the outbreak of the Crimean War she travelled to England hoping to join Florence Nightingale’s team of nurses.

When she was turned down, she travelled to the Crimea herself and established the “British Hotel” – somewhere the soldiers could rest and enjoy a good meal.

In May, a community hospital was named after the pioneering nurse.

BAME figures such as Walter Tull, the British Army’s first black officer, have been featured on commemorative coins in the past.

“But commemorative coins are not the same as legal tender because legal tender acts as a passport, an ambassador,” says Ms Zaidi.

“We must tell the story of inclusive representation as it matters for cohesion and it matters in the narrative of who we are as a nation.”

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The government’s decision to impose a 14-day quarantine on travellers arriving in the UK from Spain has caused a great deal of “uncertainty and confusion”, as one holiday firm has put it.

Here are some of the issues it raises and what you can do about them.

Why is the Foreign Office advice different from that of the Department for Transport?

Essentially, they serve different purposes. The Foreign Office applies to the whole of the UK and tells people which countries “no longer pose an unacceptably high risk for British travellers”.

In other words, the FCO is assessing whether coronavirus poses a threat to UK travellers’ well-being, as part of its wider remit to warn people of dangerous areas and trouble-spots around the world.

However, the Department for Transport advice applies only to England. It is designed to offer a list of countries from which travellers may be able to return without self-isolation.

The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own views and are entitled to offer different guidance. In this case, they have also decided to take Spain off the list of countries exempt from quarantine.

Is my insurance valid if I’m already there?

The Association of British Insurers has advised holidaymakers that if they were already in Spain when the government’s advice changed, their insurance was likely to cover them until they returned home.

But it added: “Travelling to countries against FCO advice is likely to invalidate your travel insurance and this would apply to those yet to travel to mainland Spain.

“Customers looking to change or cancel their travel plans should speak with the airline provider, tour operator or travel agent in the first instance.

“If you booked your trip or took out your travel insurance after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, you may not be covered for travel disruption or cancellation. In either circumstance, we’d advise checking with your insurer.”

What about if I’m not there but plan to go? Can I get a refund?

Again, the best thing to do is consult your airline, tour operator or travel agent. The issue is complicated because it depends on when and where you are booked to go. Besides, the government’s advice could change again with very little notice.

Tui, for one, has said that customers due to travel to all areas of Spain between 27 July and 9 August will be able to cancel or amend holidays and will be able to receive a full refund or the option to rebook their holiday with a booking incentive.

However, it adds that people with holidays from 10 August will be updated on 31 July.

Jet2 says it is advising customers to arrive for their flights as normal as it is continuing to operate its scheduled programme to and from mainland Spain, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands.

“Because the FCO travel advice to these destinations remains unchanged, our usual terms and conditions apply. As always, we advise customers to purchase appropriate travel insurance before travelling,” Jet2 says.

“This is a fast-moving situation, which we will continue to monitor very closely.”

British Airways and easyJet have also said they are maintaining their flight schedules. But airlines have expressed frustration with the government’s approach, complaining of the “uncertainty and confusion” that has resulted.

People whose trips are cancelled should get a refund within two weeks, but with the travel industry under so much pressure, that deadline may well be missed.

What are the quarantine rules for when I return?

When you arrive back in the UK, you must go straight home or to other suitable accommodation. You are allowed to travel by public transport.

Your 14-day period of self-isolation starts from the day after you arrive.

You cannot leave home except for medical assistance, to attend court or go to a funeral – or to go shopping for essentials, if no-one else can do this for you.

Leaving home for work, exercise or socialising is not allowed.

What are my rights with my employer if I have to self-isolate?

Employees or workers are not automatically entitled to statutory sick pay if they are self-isolating after returning from holiday or business travel and they cannot work from home.

That only applies if they have the virus or symptoms of it, or if there are other medical reasons.

But to a certain extent, it is at your employer’s discretion.

The industrial relations body Acas advises employees to check their workplace’s policy to see whether their employer pays statutory sick pay or a higher rate of sick pay if anyone needs to self-isolate after returning to the UK.

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The coronavirus outbreak has been followed by a massive decline in economic activity in many countries, often blamed on the lockdowns aimed at stopping the spread of the disease and limiting the deaths it causes.

In fact, there are two forces at play.

Government rules being one, and voluntary action taken by individuals and businesses is the other.

If you want to know how quick the recovery will be, you need to know the extent of each.

To the extent that it’s driven by official restrictions, lifting them would do the trick.

But it will take more than that to reverse personal choices and habits.

Consumer bounce-back?

That would need real progress to be made in reducing the risk of infection. Consumers, workers and employers would also have to be confident in that progress.

There is ample survey evidence of a reluctance to go back quickly to the pre-pandemic way of life.

IPSOS-Mori found a majority of Britons said they were still uncomfortable about a wide range of activities, including going to a bar or restaurant, large public gatherings, using public toilets or public transport.

This may be one reason why some venues that could reopen are choosing not to – although the restrictions they would have to operate under make it harder to earn a profit even if the customers were to return.

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A substantial amount of what consumers spend is what is called social consumption, where buyers are physically close to each other – eating out, live entertainment and travel, for example.

When the virus is circulating those activities expose people to the risk of infection.

The Oxford economist Simon Wren-Lewis, who looked at the possible impact of a pandemic more than a decade ago, says the sectors concerned covered more than a third of consumer spending.

There is ample anecdotal reporting that as restrictions have eased this social consumption has resumed to a significant degree.

Declining cases

But is it just because the measures have been eased?

The reason they have been eased in many countries is because cases, hospital admissions and deaths have declined.

Some people – though not all – will have concluded that it is relatively safe to go out. So that might be the reason that economic activity is picking up.

Some economists have tried to disentangle the two elements.

There are some strikingly different conclusions about the balance between the two.

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Research done at the investment bank Goldman Sachs looked at the relationship between stricter lockdown measures and the impact on economic activity.

Tougher lockdown measures did correlate with evidence pointing to sharper economic declines, although that research did not separate the contribution from fear of infection.

In the US one group from the Universities of Texas, California and Chicago concluded that it was mostly the lockdown.

Infection rate

They used data from a series of household surveys. They found that spending by the average American household fell by $1,000 between January and April.

They came to the view that lockdowns accounted for 60% of the decline in employment and that households under lockdown were spending on average 31% less than others.

They concluded “the declines in employment and spending can be largely attributed to lockdowns rather than to the share of the population infected by the coronavirus.”

But others, looking at different evidence, have come to different conclusions.

Two economists at Chicago University looked at mobile phone data on customer visits to more than two million businesses.

The fact that different state and county authorities imposed different restrictions gave them a way of estimating how much of the downturn was due to those rules.

Denmark and Sweden

They found overall a decline in consumer traffic to these businesses of 60%.

But their analysis suggested that a little more than a ninth of that was due to legal restrictions.

They also found that the extent of the declines was linked to the number of coronavirus deaths in the area.

Their overall conclusion: “Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection”.

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Others at Copenhagen University used data on bank transactions to compare Denmark and Sweden, which they say were similarly exposed to the pandemic, with only the former imposing significant restrictions.

They estimated that total spending fell by 25% in Sweden and by 29% in Denmark.

They write: “This implies that most of the economic contraction is caused by the virus itself and occurs regardless of whether governments mandate social distancing or not.”

Global Trade

More from the BBC’s series taking an international perspective on trade:

All that said, Sweden was one of the few developed countries to manage some economic growth in the first quarter of 2020, albeit just 0.1%.

Denmark’s economy shrank by 2.1% in that period.

In spite of the differences these studies all point to a contribution from both rules and choices that is substantial.

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To take the Sweden-Demark study – the four percentage-point additional fall in spending attributed to the lockdown in Denmark even on its own would be seen as a substantial downturn.

Perhaps we will get a clearer picture as more data emerges with, probably, different patterns of recovery.

So far it seems clear that both factors, fear and lockdown, have contributed to the undoubted economic damage.