Perennial signs up to 40:40 Vision, pledging to achieve gender balance in executive leadership by 2030
Perennial is proud to be a signatory to the 40:40 Vision – an investor-led initiative established by industry super fund HESTA working towards gender-balanced executive teams by 2030.
The Vision seeks to bring transparency and accountability to companies’ commitments to gender diversity in senior leadership and calls for at least 40% women in executive teams by 2030. 40:40 stands for 40% women, 40% men and 20% any gender.
As investment managers, we consider it our responsibility to ensure companies have appropriate cognitive diversity across their executive leadership teams. We believe that a gender-diverse executive team and board leads to better outcomes for companies. We find that companies with greater female representation in executive leadership benefit from diversity of thought, background and experience. This typically delivers stronger outcomes for the business, stakeholders and shareholders over the medium term.
Perennial’s pledge to the 40:40 Vision is symbolic of the ongoing engagement the Perennial investment team has been having with ASX-listed and unlisted corporates on gender diversity – at both the executive and board levels. In relation to board gender diversity, since April 2020, Perennial has been a signatory to the 30% club and supported the view that the board of directors of ASX-listed companies should have a minimum 30% representation of women. In 2021, following engagement with the Perennial Better Future team, 10 Better Future portfolio companies appointed an additional female Non-Executive Director to the board.
The Perennial team looks forward to reporting on the 40:40 Vision’s progress and driving structural change, by continuing to encourage companies to set medium and long-term gender diversity targets and pledge to achieve gender balance by 2030. We are pleased to be joining as the lead investor for 3 portfolio companies and will be taking charge of conversations with these corporates on enhancing the representation of women in their executive teams.
We believe the collective support of the ASX300 and investors is critical to achieving gender-balanced executive teams that will help strengthen corporate governance and performance for shareholders. We encourage other investors and ASX300 companies to join the pledge to achieve the 40:40:20 gender balance target in executive leadership by 2030, to bring about tangible, structural change.
Disclaimer: Please note that these are the views of the writer and not necessarily the views of Perennial. This article does not take into account your investment objectives, particular needs or financial situation. Some small changes were made to this article, based on updated information.
