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Improving Corporate Governance breakfast report

Posted in WIL event reports
06 October 2011

On 6 October, the European Network for Women in Leadership (WIL), in cooperation with Administration Moderne, the French association of female high civil servants and the American Chamber of Commerce in France held a high-level debate around the topic of governance. Over 70 high-profile attendees joined us at Swisslife Banque Privée to discuss and propose solutions to improve governance in the context of the financial crisis, which go beyond the sole use of quotas on Boards.
Economic, Social and Financial Governance. The New Models of Governance, New Opportunities for Women.

The first roundtable, moderated by WIL President, Thaima Samman, touched upon policy and theoretical issues regarding governance, in particular diversity on boards.

Eugenia Bieto, Director General of ESADE, is the first and only woman running a business school in Europe. As a renowned researcher in entrepreneurship, she spoke about women’s reluctance to setting up large enterprises, as well as their distinctive leadership style. The cultural background and women’s self-perception strongly influence their entrepreneurial skills. While women often consider themselves unable to reach others’ expectations or limit themselves because of the job requirements, they also have a relational leadership style, meaning that they avoid a hierarchical distribution of tasks and conflicts. According to Dr. Bieto, the current crisis needs entrepreneurs with large projects, to create growth, who also know how to lead in a more disseminated way, to avoid another crisis. There is a need to both encourage women to be more entrepreneurial, and to promote a relational, ‘feminine-like’ type of leadership.

Ramon Fernandez, General Director for the French Treasury and Economic Policy, discussed the measures taken by the French Treasury to increase women’s participation in management positions - it has a clear target to rise women’s presence at the top from 12% to 25% (22% currently). Mr. Fernandez stressed that there is a need to strengthen the female talent pipeline from a very early stage. The measure he has taken include taking positive discriminatory decisions at recruitment stage and changes in the working culture (e.g. focus on reaching targets rather than being obliged to stick to strict working hours, replacing women on maternity leaves with male interims). He also recommended a method applied by his former superior and current IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who, based on a list of high potential women she had, named women in top-level positions in her ministry.

Paulina Dejmek, Member of Cabinet of Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Michel Barnier, spoke about lawmakers’ duty to take action in order to enhance diversity at Board and executive levels, in general and in terms of women’s presence. She pointed out that the recent public consultation held by the Commission on improving corporate governance gathered suggestions to increase diversity as a way to strengthen corporate governance. In particular, banks will be required, most probably through regulatory measures, to implement a strategy on diversifying their governance and be more transparent in terms of decision-making.

Agnes Bricard, President of the High Council of the French Institute of Chartered Accountants, is working with other women in finance and in academics to address the issue of building the female talent pipeline and provide different organizations with a list of competent women for board levels. Mrs. Bricard recalled that, thirty years ago, the French feminist Elisabeth Badinter spoke about an incompatibility between the quota and the values of the French Republic. However, as without quotas, no progress has been made in comparison to other countries, and in particular Norway, Mrs. Bricard considers that they are necessary today to speed up the process of modernizing the society.

Best Practices for Better Governance

The second roundtable discussed best practices of supporting women’s access to leadership positions and was moderated by Nathalie Wright, Public Sector Lead of Microsoft France.

Dunya Bouhacene, Partner at Women Equity for Growth, brought into discussion women’s challenges to build high-growth enterprises. She noted that while women-led businesses manage to attract 35% less capital than men-led businesses, they are also 12% more profitable. Starting from the fact that 52.6% of French SMES have no women in their management, compared to 24% at global level, Mrs. Bouhacene stressed that the political leaders should pass other regulations to promote the gender mix, and nominate more women in political roles.

Edward Arkwright, Director of Strategy of Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, spoke about the bank’s strategy to retain women and to build the pipeline on a long term basis. In order to define its strategy, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations started from looking at numbers - out of its 1835 management posts, 35% are held by women currently (45% of employees are women), and only two of them are in the executive committee. The current regulatory environment will be only the pretext to find and promote the female talents during the next 10 years, so that positions at the Board level can be occupied by women with the right preparation.

Pierre Alégoet, high-ranking official at the General Secretariat of the French government (who replaced Jérôme Filippini, Deputy Secretary General of the French Government), spoke about the government’s plan to promote women in the first 500 management positions of the public sector. In coordination with other ministers, the General Secretariat will define a profile common to these management positions and build together the pipeline of competencies. The topic has stirred an intense discussion, as the audience pointing out that some of the measures have been set up in the past, but stirred little progress.

Eric Boustouller, President of Microsoft France, spoke about diversity as part of Microsoft’s CSR strategy. The company mobilizes managers to create an environment that integrates more women – therefore, every manager has a specific yearly diversity objective that is set up together with his supervisor and not imposed. Mr. Boustouller considers that quotas are important, but they are not enough, as other solutions such as support women’s comeback after maternity leaves, offering coaching opportunities for women to build their career within the company, encouraging promotions for women, need to be thought through.

During the two roundtables, we touched upon several issues, and came to meaningful conclusions. Diversity can lead to strengthening corporate governance and lawmakers should take action and enhance diversity at Board and executive levels. Gender quotas are a big step towards reaching a more even representation of men and women on high-level positions, however it is only one solution to a more complex issue. The political leaders should pass other regulations to promote the gender mix, and also to nominate more women in political roles.

Tags: Eugenia Bieto, Ramon Fernandez, Dunya Bouhacene, Paulina Dejmek, Agnes Bricard, Edward Arkwright, Thaima Samman, Eric Boustouller, Pierre Alégoet, Administration Moderne, Governance, American Chamber of Commerce

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