In the UK, EOS tightened its policy for board-level gender diversity with a guideline of 30% women for FTSE 100 boards and 25% for FTSE 250. It also introduced a policy on below-board diversity, with the guideline that it would consider recommending a vote against the chair of FTSE 100 companies with no women on their executive committee. In the US, EOS continued to push its expectations on board diversity across a number of dimensions, recommending opposition to 916 proposals in 2019, compared with 618 proposals in 2018.
In Germany, EOS released its new German Corporate Governance principles, which set out its expectations for 2020 and beyond, including that companies achieve 30% female representation on executive boards. Currently, only 8% of German companies have more than one woman on the executive board. Two-thirds still have no female board members. EOS raised the issue of diversity at one German car manufacturer’s annual shareholder meeting, along with concerns about audit tenure that led it to oppose the ratification of the auditors.