(Bloomberg) -- Time is
running out for Ulrich Lehner, the supervisory board chairman of German
steelmaker ThyssenKrupp AG, as lawmakers prepare to enforce female quotas in
corporate boardrooms.
The number of women on
the board that oversees ThyssenKrupp’s executives is set to rise to four of a
total 20 after a shareholder meeting today, short of the 30 percent minimum
that will be required. Starting in 2016, more than 100 of the country’s biggest
listed companies will be forced to choose women when filling vacant supervisory
board seats to reach the threshold. This year, smaller firms must set their own
targets and publicize plans to achieve these.
“Good women are a rare
commodity” for supervisory boards, Lehner told journalists in Dusseldorf on
Jan. 27. “Where will these women come from who are suitable to take up
supervisory board positions? They come from the same places as suitable men
come from, from occupations that qualify them to supervise companies.”
German managers are
railing against the legislation that will be introduced to lawmakers in a first
reading in the federal parliament today. Firms’ sluggishness in advancing
boardroom diversity prompted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in November
to resort to quotas to enforce change.
The new rules are
making it more difficult to fill board seats, said Lehner. “I’m an opponent of
the female quota in the corporate governance codex. I’m a friend of women. I
love women on supervisory boards. The more, the better. The better these women,
the better.”
Key Posts
While women hold
several key posts in Merkel’s cabinet, including the Defense Minister, just 6 percent
of management board positions and 22 percent of supervisory board seats are
held by women at companies in the benchmark DAX Index, according to the Economy
Ministry’s website.
Germany lags European
neighbors including Belgium, Denmark and The Netherlands, according to data
compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence of Stoxx Europe 600 Index companies in 2013.
Norway has the highest proportion in Europe after introducing a 40 percent
quota in 2003, followed by Finland and France, which also have legislation in
place.
The larger German
companies affected by the rules will need to add about 170 women to reach the
30 percent target, Manuela Schwesig, Germany’s family minister, said in an
e-mailed response to questions.
40 Million
“I’m sure that among 40
million German women there are 170 who are very capable of doing the job,” she
said. “I can’t follow the frequently used argument that there aren’t enough
women around for supervisory board positions in certain industries.”
Lehner represents a
generation of managers whose network of supervisory board posts gives them the
balance of power in corporate Germany. In addition to opposing female quotas,
he also rejects steps to limit the number of board seats one person can occupy,
describing the rules as “patronizing.”
The ThyssenKrupp
chairman, who started out 40 years ago as a tax auditor at KPMG before becoming
chief executive officer at consumer chemical company Henkel AG in 2000, is also
chairman of Deutsche Telekom AG and holds board seats at Porsche SE, EON SE and
Novartis AG.
His peers include
Gerhard Cromme, the chairman of Siemens AG; Werner Wenning, the chairman of EON
SE and Bayer AG and Cromme’s deputy at Siemens; Manfred Schneider, the chairman
of RWE AG and Linde AG; and Wulf Bernotat, deputy chairman of insurer Allianz SE
and a board member at retailer Metro AG, Bayer and Deutsche Telekom.
German supervisory
boards, composed of shareholder and employee representatives, are responsible
for hiring top management and sign off on strategic decisions.
‘Strong Reaction’
“The strong reaction to
the bill has shown that legislation is necessary,” said Anke Hassel, a
professor of public policy at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.
“Companies for a long time have used the old excuse that there aren’t enough
qualified women around, while they haven’t done much to change this.”
Lehner “represents a
widespread view,” she said. “German corporate culture is very conservative,
because German culture is conservative. The traditional role of the family is
kept alive by Germany tax law and other regulations. Corporate Germany reflects
German society.”
Women are beginning to
enter the fold. Simone Bagel-Trah became the only female supervisory board
chairman of a DAX 30 company when she was elected at Henkel in 2009. She is
also on the board at Bayer.
Machine Tools
Nicola
Leibinger-Kammueller, the chief executive at machine tools maker Trumpf GmbH,
holds board seats at Siemens, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Voith GmbH and Axel
Springer AG, while Renate Koecher, the director of market research and opinion
organization Allensbach Institute, is on the board at Allianz, Bayerische
Motorenwerke AG, Infineon Technologies AG and Robert Bosch GmbH.
The new rules don’t
just apply to supervisory boards. All companies also have to set targets for
increasing the number of women on their management boards, which are
responsible for day-to-day operations.
“We simply can’t wait,
we need something to change,” said Ramona Pisal, the president of the German
Women Lawyers Association, a Berlin-based pressure group that has attended more
than 300 annual shareholder meetings since 2009. “Supervisory boards are a
strong signal and they are not powerless.”
Quelle: http://www.bloomberg.com
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