UK News

Getting women on board

The previous UK government loved reviews and inquiries – and the new one is little different. From corporate governance, to pensions, to the structure of banks, those in Westminster relish a report, preferably one packed full of important-sounding recommendations but which compel no one to do anything. That’s because, very often, the problem being tackled is not one that can be easily or neatly solved with legislation or a slap on the wrist.

The government’s review into female representation on the boards of big business is a case in point. The panel, led by former trade minister Mervyn Davies, met on Monday to discuss final recommendations for increasing the number of female board directors, with quotas mooted as one option. Its report is due out soon. But quotas are highly unlikely – for the simple reason that business does not like them.

“…boards and shareholders should be able to form a board based on the merits of an individual and the requirements of the company,” the Institute of Directors said in its submission to the Davies review. “Far from increasing the legitimacy of boards, gender quotas would undermine the credibility of female board members. Female directors would be tainted with the suspicion that they had been appointed in order to fulfil regulatory requirements, not on the basis of merit.”

Of course, no company or organisation should employ an individual who is patently less qualified or able than another simply because of their gender, or the colour of their skin. But clearly much more does need to be done to address homogenity at the top of British business (and countless other fields, not least politics).

So, here are some thoughts about how change can be wrought, and about why the IoD submission itself shows where some of the biggest problems lie:

- Diversity of experience Those who seek to explain why there are so few women on British boards often argue that the pool of suitably qualified and experienced candidates is very small. But that depends on what you mean by experience and expertise. The boards of the banks that have fallen spectacularly from grace in the past couple of years were ostensibly packed with people who boasted years of experience. Yet few – if any – piped up to rein in reckless lending practices or overly ambitious mergers and acquisitions.

What boards need is diversity of experience, not homogeneity. A herd mentality is the least useful attitude of a strong board. Yes, expertise is necessary – but equally crucial is the ability to question management decisions and strategy – and to look at problems from different angles. A board whose directors have diverse experience and backgrounds encourages this.

from Reuters Investigates:

This is going to hurt

In Britain, the coalition government is readying its “comprehensive spending review” later this month. Rather than get caught up in chasing which government departments or bodies will be cut, two of our reporters focused on a single council – in this case, the City of Birmingham, which happens to be the biggest local authority in Europe – and explored what it’s doing to prepare for the change ahead.

For a lot of people, the most visible sign of cuts in Britain will be at a local level, as services are pulled back and jobs are lost. In the leadup to the spending review details,  lobbyists in London have been doing great business. Check out their tactics for survival – although if you’re worried about your government contract but haven’t done anything about it, you’re probably already too late.

from Reuters Investigates:

Morbid money-spinners

If the life settlements market seems ghoulish, here’s a British scandal which isn’t doing the image of the business any favours. It’s one of the worst the country’s seen.

Around 30,000 mainly elderly investors in the UK put their money into a company called Keydata, hoping to make a little extra cash to fund their own retirement with the promise of a healthy return.

What they were buying sounded kosher, even if it did depend on how fast their wealthy American counterparts were dying. Of course, the investors may not have known that.

As is so often the case with these things, the projections were a little optimistic. And then some other irregularities blew up. Around 100 million pounds went missing, one of the business’s partners dropped dead in Singapore and the investment company was shut down by the regulators, leaving British pensioners like Tony and Pam Tobin out of pocket.  The Serious Fraud Office is investigating.

Tony and Pam Tobin

Undeterred, the other key character behind Keydata is determined to fight the regulators’ decision.  "I am someone who can make the impossible possible," he tells us.

from The Great Debate UK:

In football, the biggest losers win

“Football is just a business nowadays, isn’t it?”

Well, actually no, it’s not, and it never has been - at least not if a business means an enterprise intended to maximise shareholder value.

In the “good old days” – so called because they were bloody awful – football clubs were financed by a Big Sugar Daddy, often the millionaire who owned the local mill or maybe a small chain of shops in the town.

As Chairman of the Board, he would treat the club as his little indulgence, a rich man’s hobby, an alternative to collecting old masters or old mistresses.

In return, he would behave as if he owned the club (which he did), his name would probably be on the main stand and his real business – the one that generated the money - would advertise in the match programme and on boards around the touchline.

With players’ wages subject to a Football League limit so low as to have become a joke (or a national disgrace) by the 1950s, the BSD had little to lose, even though there was no income from TV, only peanuts from sponsorship deals and match tickets cost less than you’d pay nowadays for a half-time coffee.

What’s changed? Everything, except the role of the BSD. Millionaires or the simply rich need not apply nowadays, at least not if a club entertains serious ambitions in the English Premiership (or the Spanish Primera Liga or Italian Seria A).

How big a problem is workplace bullying?

A political row is brewing after allegations of bullying were aimed at Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The claims, made in a book and published in a Sunday newspaper, accused Brown of several abusive outbursts, including grabbing staff by the lapels, shoving them aside and shouting at them.

Downing Street has strenuously denied that the “malicious allegations” are true, while Conservative leader David Cameron has said he expects there to be an inquiry into the claims.

Christine Pratt, head of the National Bullying Helpline, weighed into the debate by saying several people who worked at Number 10 had been in touch with the charity, adding that none had directly accused Mr Brown of bullying.

Meanwhile, Business secretary Lord Mandelson, in an interview with the BBC, said that Brown is “demanding of people” and himself but has never bullied anyone.

Away from politics, research suggests that bullying in the workplace is on the rise, and the recession may be to blame. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) revealed in January that one in 10 employees experience bullying or harassment in the workplace, while the union Unison claimed that around one-third of workers say they were bullied in the second half of 2009 –- a 100% increase on a decade ago.

The rise was apparently down to the fact that running a business became more stressful as the economic crisis worsened. Managers, under more pressure than ever before, felt the need to be more critical of their colleagues and often took their anger and frustration out on them, all of which resulted in a large rise in employment tribunal cases.

Do you think there is a problem with bullying in the workplace? Is it something you have witnessed or been a victim of? Can passion for the job often be wrongly interpreted as harassment?

Is powerful Mandy talking up the euro?

When Prime Minister Gordon Brown reshuffled his cabinet last week, fending off a challenge to his authority, a significant outcome was the creation of one of the most powerful ministerial jobs Britain has seen in years.

Peter Mandelson, a former European commissioner who has twice served in British governments in the past and twice been forced to resign, was reconfirmed as secretary of state for business, but also given greatly expanded authorities that make him a powerful if unofficial number two to Brown.

Much fun has been made of Mandelson’s new title, which because he has been elevated to the House of Lords in order to serve in the cabinet now officially reads as:

Did Yasmina Siadatan deserve to win “The Apprentice”?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown might be having a hard time with women, but there is clearly no glass ceiling in his good friend Sir Alan Sugar’s boardroom.

“The Apprentice” final saw Kate Walsh and Yasmina Siadatan go stiletto-to-stiletto — “You’re the best that I’ve ever had in the final in this boardroom,” said Sugar.

The two 27-year-olds had to come up with a new type of chocolate and develop a marketing campaign for their brand which they had to pitch to advertising, confectionery and retail experts.

Licensing development manager Walsh’s “Choc D’Amour” was the better tasting chocolate but at £13 a pop left Sugar less than impressed.

Restaurateur Siadatan’s “Cocoa Electric” brand was seven pounds cheaper and if the taste of her chocolates clearly left a lot to be desired — one retail buyer said no shopper would come back for another box –  the mass-market pitch she put together had Sugar salivating.

It was enough for the tycoon to raise his finger and point it in Siadatan’s direction and tell her she was hired. Promising Sugar she would be his best ever apprentice, Siadatan will now get the chance to work in his business empire on a 100,000 pounds-a-year salary.

“I’m absolutely up for it,” said Siadatan. “I think Sir Alan knows my qualities, the best way to make use of me.”

Should Alan Sugar have been hired?

Among the surprises last week, as one cabinet minster after another stepped down, was Gordon Brown’s appointment of Sir Alan Sugar as the government’s Enterprise Tsar.

Was this a sound decision, several analysts wondered, or was it a possible case of Brown seeming to confuse the worlds of politics and show business, hoping perhaps that what works in the studio would work just as well in the real world?

The star of the BBC show “The Apprentice” was to be offered a peerage and would take a role as an adviser on matters affecting small and medium-sized businesses.

But the Conservatives are objecting. They say Sugar should not be working for the government and front a TV show at the same time, particularly when the next series of the Apprentice goes out early in 2010 just a few months before a general election. The appointment, they contend, breaches BBC rules on political independence and impartiality.

Sugar himself insists there is no conflict of interest. ‘It’s very simple – all I am is an adviser, I’m not a policymaker,’ he says. ”I have been loyal to Gordon Brown and the Labour Party for quite a while, but I also have my loyalties to the BBC.”

Do you believe Sugar should have been appointed? Or is Gordon Brown perfectly entitled to have who he likes in his government of all the talents, especially someone with such proven business acumen?

Walking the risk-reward tightrope in Iraq

It’s fair to say that investing in Iraq is not for the faint-hearted.

Just last week more than 200 people were killed in suicide bombings across the country, while kidnapping and armed assault remain commonplace.

That said, more than 600 delegates still turned up to the Invest Iraq 2009 conference held in London this week, eager to find out what opportunities there might be in the oil, construction, petrochemicals, engineering, agriculture, transport and tourism industries, to name a few.

From City of London bankers to executives from Shell and Chevron, bosses from energy service companies and airport construction firms, management training specialists and security advisers, they were all there, milling around a west London hotel in their smartest suits, seeing what business they might be able to do.

There were plenty of Iraqis too. Mostly businessmen with operations outside the country — in Lebanon, Jordan or Dubai — and now looking to step up investment in their homeland.

Some of them, perhaps feeling more familiar with the lay of the land than Western investors, had already made sizeable moves into Iraq, but judging from the questions they were putting to the Iraqi officials speaking at the conference, they were concerned about a lack of legal direction from the government.

One Iraqi was particularly illustrative of the potential pitfalls that can befall investors.

Women in the boardroom

Women should be considered for new board positions in banks bailed out by the government, to counter the male dominance of senior directorships at the biggest companies, the Cranfield School of Management has recommended.

It points to the fact that the number of female directors in FTSE 100 firms has barely risen over the past 10 years, with more than a fifth still run by all-male boards.

Do you think it has a point? Or is it a bad idea to set quotas and targets in this way?