Todd Gormley, Associate Professor of Finance, Olin Business School, Washington University
In 2017, “The Big Three” institutional investors launched campaigns to increase gender diversity on corporate boards. We estimate that their campaigns led firms to add at least 2.5 times as many female directors in 2019 as they had in 2016 and to promote female directors to key board positions. Firms increased female representation by relying less on managers’ existing networks to identify candidates and by placing less emphasis on candidates’ executive experience. Our results highlight index investors’ ability to influence firms’ governance structures and shareholder advocacy’s potential to expand women’s participation in corporate leadership more fully than government mandates.
Speaker bio
Todd Gormley is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis and Academic Director of their Global Master of Finance Program. He originally joined Olin in 2006 after graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with his PhD in Economics before moving to The Wharton School in 2009 and then returning to Olin in 2016. His earlier research focuses on why managers sometimes fail to act in the best interest of shareholders and what governance and ownership arrangements mitigate these conflicts. His most recent research has analysed the impact of passive institutional investors’ rise on stewardship and firms. Todd’s research has won numerous best paper awards, and he previously served as an Associate Editor at the Review of Financial Studies and currently serves as an Associate Editor at both the Review of Finance and Journal of Financial & Quantitative Analysis.
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Meeting ID: 976 7319 7487
Password: 496619
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Event timings
Date:
25 May 2021
Start Time:
13:00
End Time:
14:00