Men dominate boards and executive teams of companies going public
A study of 61 companies that filed initial public offering documents in the first two weeks of August found that nearly 88 per cent of the firms, most of which were in the technology sector, had only one or no women on their board of directors.
And 93 per cent of the firms studied had only one or no women among their top level executives.
Damion Rallis, co-founder of board data firm Free Float Analytics and a former analyst at MSCI, who conducted the research, said it was a'Bro IPO' summer for the stock market.
'What I'm seeing more and more of, is that men are the only ones who seem to be enriching themselves off this IPO market,' Rallis said.
In total, women made up only 12 per cent of the 349 directors and 11 per cent of 205 executives identified by Rallis in the filings.
Prominent stock market listings this month have included Bullish, the crypto exchange that raised $1.1 billion at a $5.4 billion valuation last week. The company lists one woman on its 12-person executive team and one woman on its six-person board.
StubHub, the ticket-selling exchange that is preparing an IPO, has one female executive on its team of five and one woman across its team of 10 executives and board directors.
There has been an improvement in overall female representation on US boards in recent years. At the end of June last year, women held 30 per cent of the seats on Russell 3000 company boards, up from 29 per cent in 2023 and 28 per cent in 2022
However, US boards are under less pressure to improve diversity after a US appeals court in December ruled that Nasdaq could not impose rules requiring companies listed on the exchange to have women and minority directors on their boards or to explain why they do not.
President Trump has criticised corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and axed government initiatives.
In February, Goldman Sachs cancelled a four-year-old policy to only take public companies that had two diverse board members, citing 'legal developments related to board diversity requirements'.
In February, Goldman Sachs, led by David Solomon cancelled a policy to only take public companies that had two diverse board members
SETH WENIG/AP
Rallis said he has noticed fewer women being appointed to boards since 'the political winds have changed in America'.
He said: 'There was this kind of minimum threshold to have about three women on the board, roughly 30 per cent, and I'm noticing now that more and more boards are going down to two, they're going down to one. They just don't care as much as they used to.'
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