Nearly all UK’s FTSE companies have at least one minority ethnic board member

theguardian.com:

Nearly all the UK’s 100 largest listed companies now have at least one minority ethnic director on their boards, according to the latest update from the government-backed Parker review, which was set up to improve diversity in Britain’s boardrooms.

The voluntary survey of FTSE 100 companies showed that 96% of companies in the index had at least one director from an ethnic minority background on their board by the end of 2022.

Meanwhile, almost half (49) of these 96 businesses now have more than one minority ethnic director on their boards.

This marked progress from a year earlier, when only 89 firms met the target; however it demonstrates that a handful of Britain’s top firms are still failing to bring an end to all-white boardrooms.

Frasers Group, the owner of the House of Fraser department stores, was among the four FTSE 100 companies that did not meet the target by the end of 2022. Frasers, once known as Sports Direct, was previously run by Mike Ashley, who stepped down from the board last year but remains the company’s controlling shareholder.

Among the other companies which retain their all-white boards by the end of 2022 were the investment firm F&C Investment Trust and the student accommodation manager Unite Group. The domestic repair and emergency services business HomeServe also had not met the target in the survey, but was delisted at the start of this year after it was sold to a Canadian alternative investment group in a multibillion-pound takeover.

The Parker review target is voluntary, but companies that fail to participate are expected to explain why.

The review was established in 2017, launched amid several measures designed to end the lack of diversity in the upper echelons of corporate Britain. FTSE 100