Even by Asia’s low standards when it comes to having women on corporate boards, the progress of the region’s billionaires is lagging: Most of the richest men in China, Japan and South Korea run companies with few, if any, female board members.
The situation is particularly extreme among Asia’s biggest tech companies with billionaire founders. Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group, Takemitsu Takizaki’s bar-code reader and sensor-making Keyence, Pony Ma’s Tencent Holdings, Robin Li’s Baidu, Lee Kun-hee’s Samsung Electronics and Chey Tae-won’s chipmaker SK Hynix have all-male boards.
The richest man in China, Jack Ma of Alibaba Group Holding, has one woman on the board.
While policy makers in Japan, India and elsewhere have sought to push for greater roles for women in corporate life, the world of clubby billionaires is slow to change. Asia is almost the worst region in the world, behind Latin America, when it comes to having women in the boardroom, with an average of 7.8 percent of directors, according to a study by Deloitte. In Europe, 22.6 percent of directors are female, the study found.
“Guys often like to have their best friends, not the best people, on their boards,” said Susan Stautberg, CEO of Women Corporate Directors Foundation, a Florida-based group with members who sit on more than 8,500 boards worldwide. WCD is hosting a conference in Hong Kong starting Wednesday, and Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who in July became the first woman to lead the city government, will be the keynote speaker Thursday.
It’s not just tech. Among the top five richest men in the three countries, according to Monday’s Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Tadashi Yanai of Japan’s Fast Retailing and China’s Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties have no women on their boards. Nor do Suh Kyung-bae’s Korean cosmetics maker Amorepacific Group and subsidiary Amorepacific. Chinese package delivery company SF Holding, founded by Wang Wei, has one.
Alone among China’s top-five billionaires, Hui Ka Yan has two on his China Evergrande Group board.
While it would be difficult to argue that Asia’s women-less boards are contributing to poor performance, numerous studies have shown that having the perspective of women can help promote further excellence.
"The research out there shows that gender diversity drives better discussion at the board," said Pru Bennett, head of investment stewardship in the Asia-Pacific region for asset management firm BlackRock, who promotes the issue when she meets with executives at Asian companies, including those in which BlackRock invests. "This is a strategic issue. It is about getting the right people on the board and driving better decision making."
Several of the companies that responded said diversity is important to them and that they’re committed to improving the role of women in management.
Many of Asia’s billionaires are less likely to have women on their boards because they control their companies through their own shareholdings or those of family members and family-controlled entities, according to Suken Bhandari, Singapore-based head of advisory for the region for ISS Corporate Solutions, a US-based consulting firm. That makes them less receptive to calls for greater diversity from institutional investors and other minority shareholders, he said.
“The more fragmented the ownership, the more diverse the board tends to be,” said Bhandari.
Frustrating Activists
The lack of progress in getting women into Asian boardrooms is frustrating for activists who see gender diversity improving in the US, Europe and Australia. In Asia, the worst performers are Japan, at four percent, and South Korea, at two percent, according to the most recent ISS data. While China far exceeds them at nine percent, that’s still less than half of the percentage of female directors on S&P 500 companies in the US
“We think they should be trying harder,” Bennett said. “These companies need to do better.”
Smaller Asian economies are doing better – in part because of a desire to improve corporate governance in order to lure foreign investment, said Stautberg. In Thailand, women hold 14 percent of directorships, ISS data show. That makes Thailand the best performer in the region. The Philippines and Malaysia are tied at 12 percent.
Another leader is CK Hutchison Holdings, the flagship of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, which has four women on its 20-person board. – Bloomberg