Derek Higgs was Chairman of Partnerships UK plc and a non-executive director of Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c., The British Land Company plc, Egg plc and Jones Lang La Salle Inc. He also was a senior adviser in the UK to UBS Warburg and a Director of London Regional Transport and Coventry City Football Club. He was a director of Prudential plc between February 1996 and December 2000, and Chairman of its fund management subsidiary, M&G Investment Management Ltd. Prior to joining Prudential, he spent 24 years as a corporate adviser with the SG Warburg Group. He was a member of the Financial Reporting Council and a qualified chartered accountant. He passed away April 2008.

The Derek Higgs Report - The Independent Review of Non-Executive Directors: www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/businesslaw/corp-governance/higgs-tyson/page23342.html.

At the conclusion of his review, Higgs recommended that a group of business leaders, executive search professionals and leaders from public interest organizations be formed to identify 100 prominent candidates from the non-commercial sector and who might have the skills and experience required to serve as effective independent directors on British public companies.

Hewitt invited Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Dean of the London Business School, to head the task force. Including Dean Tyson, 14 distinguished corporate and public leaders participated in the task force and 7 of them were women. After meeting from March through May of 2003, Dean Tyson and the task force produced their report and recommendations in June 2003.

Dean Tyson and the group rejected the idea that they could or should establish a public sector database of potential independent director candidates.

"On the basis of our findings, our group did not try to develop such a list. We concluded that broadening the pools of talent from which companies recruit NEDs [non-executive directors] is not constrained by a lack of qualified candidates, including candidates from the non-commercial sector.

"With more companies committed to searching broadly and rigorously for NED talent, there is scope for hundreds of new qualified individuals, . . in company boardrooms. But the identification of NED talent cannot take place in a vacuum without reference to a particular company and its needs, which will always be unique and subject to change. . . .

"To present a list of names in isolation of such an exercise is to reaffirm the traditional approach of identifying candidates by "who you know" rather than "what you need.""

The Tyson Report on the Recruitment and Development of Non-Executive Directors: www.london.edu/facultyandresearch/research/docs/TysonReport.pdf.

Nevertheless, the task force concluded that there was a strong need for greater diversity of individuals to be included as independent directors and that more research and measurement of diversity on boards was an important goal.

Other recommendations included:

• Development of a code of conduct for public director appointments, now monitored by the Commissioner of Public Appointments, Dame Rennie Fritchie.
• More rigorous and transparent selection processes, based on merit and on specified selection criteria.
• Avoidance of tokenism as a way of achieving diversity or inclusion goals.
• More and better training for independent directors.
• The Financial Reporting Council or the London Stock Exchange convene executive search providers and establish improved director training guidelines.

Since the publication of the report, a number of separate efforts have been initiated in the United Kingdom to focus on the advancement of women to top corporate levels.

The Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments (OCPA) www.publicappointmentscommissioner.org/ supports the work of the Commissioner for Public Appointments which is independent of the government. The Commissioner's role is to regulate, monitor, report and advise on appointments made by UK Ministers and by members of the National Assembly for Wales to the boards of around 1,100 national and regional public bodies in addition to some bodies within Northern Ireland.

The Commissioner's Code of Practice covers all ministerial appointments to the boards of executive and advisory non-departmental public bodies, NHS bodies, public corporations, nationalised industries, and utility regulators.

More recently, efforts to advance women in leadership roles are being undertaken by the Government Equalities Office: www.equalities.gov.uk (formerly the Women's Equiality Unit).

Another female activist is Hilarie Owen, founder of the not-for profit organization, Institute of Leadership www.iofl.org, which focuses on research and developing lifelong leadership potential beginning around five years of age. When studying leadership, she found that when women are put in positional leadership, they are far more transformational. With this in mind, she has now set up the Register for Executive and Non-Executive Women (RENEW) to develop more women into leadership roles. See: RENEW to provide head-hunting services for large and small British firms. Today, however, the database approach has been replaced by a leadership seminars and training approach.

"Hilarie Owen's career began as a political scientist, but changed when she joined the corporate world. Following a successful career in corporate business, in which she turned one company around and increased growth by 600 percent, she had a year secondment with the UK Department of Trade and Industry that progressed into business consultancy. After ten years and her first best selling book, Creating Top Flight Teams, Hilarie set up the Institute of Leadership in 2000. Since then her books In Search of Leaders and Unleashing Leaders have sold worldwide including China, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, South Africa, Australia and the United States. Following this, Ms. Owen wrote Grow Your Personal Capital and The Leadership Manual."

Denise Kingsmill, then Deputy Chair of the Competition Commission, published The Kingsmill Review, an overview of the business case of women at work. See: archived copy

At the London Business School, Dean Tyson collaborated with Sloan School of Management, Stanford University, Spencer Stuart, and Saatchi & Saatchi to establish a Sloan Fellowship for Women Leaders of Tomorrow in November 2004.

The London Business School also established a Women in Business Club: www.wiblondon.org which now has major corporate sponsors including many major American securities firms with less than stellar records of diversity among their corporate and board ranks.

The Cranfield University School of Management, Center for Developing Women Business Leaders, initiated the Female FTSE 100 Index and advanced leadership training for women. For historical reports, see: http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/p3012/Research/Research-Centres/Centre-for-Women-Business-Leaders/Reports. For the 2009 Female FTSE 100 Report, see: http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/dinamic-content/research/documents/ft2009.pdf

"[In 2009, there] are now 2,281 women (up from 1,877 last year) on the corporate boards and executive committees/senior teams of all the FTSE listings, hence there is a huge and growing pipeline of female talent available to the FTSE 100 boards."

"The percentage of new female appointments to FTSE 100 boards has risen from last year is 10.7% to 14.7% this year."

"Second we have added a supplement to our report of 100 'Women to Watch' giving sketches of senior women we feel should be seriously considered for boardroom appointments."

The Cranfield research was updated most recently with a series of studies completed in November 2009: Increasing Diversity on Boards.

Opportunity Now - a program established in 1991 by "Business In The Community" to foster the advancement of women in business in the UK.

"Opportunity Now is a business-led campaign that works with employers to realise the economic potential and business benefits that women at all levels contribute to the workforce. By inspiring employers to challenge complacency and tackle barriers to women's progress, we encourage an inclusive culture in the workplace."

www.bitc.org.uk/programmes/programme_directory/opportunity_now.

Directorbank - European executive search firm database of executive appointments:www.directorbank.com

Executive Appointments: Global executive search firm www.exec-appointments.com

Charity and Fundraising Appointments: www.cfappointments.com.

The Independent Director Initiative (IDI): this entity no longer exists, but rather operates as individual efforts of the joint venture partners:

• Ernst & Young's Non-Executive Director Initiative www.ey.com/GLOBAL/content.nsf/UK/Issues_and_Pespectives_-_NEDI and the


• Institute of Directors (IoD) www.iod.com/corporategovernance.

Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organizations (ACEVO): established in 1987 by a group of charity chief executives who wanted to develop a networking and support group for the voluntary organization sector. www.acevo.org.uk.

National Council of Voluntary Organizations (NCVO): www.ncvo-vol.org.uk.

City Women's Network: London's network for senior executive women: www.citywomen.org.

Aurora Gender Capital Management: Where Women Want To Work web site: www.www2wk.com.

PRO:NED Australian-based Board and Executive Search Consultants that have collaborative offices in the UK. www.proned.com.au.

The "Director Connection" Scheme of PRO:NED:

"PRO:NED has developed a scheme to facilitate the placement of senior executives of major corporations onto the boards of smaller companies, thus providing these selected executives with an invaluable exposure to advising and decision-making at board level. The smaller companies benefit by accessing the skills and corporate experience of these outstanding rising executives, not normally within their sights, to assist them with their boardroom decisions."

"Initiated in the UK by PRO:NED's strategic alliance partner, Hanson Green, this scheme provides major corporations with an additional valuable training facility which will assist with the individual career development and retention of selected senior executives. On the other hand the scheme benefits the smaller companies by providing them with access to a wide range of the best and brightest executives to act as fully independent directors without the expense of undertaking a formal search for such people themselves."

Hanson Green: Board and Executive Search Consultants: www.hansongreen.co.uk.

The European Professional Women's Network - Think Tank on Women on Boards: www.europeanpwn.net/tht_wob/tht_wob.html.

"Step-outs" - predominantly women who take a break to handle family obligations - often discover that the on-ramps are missing when they're ready to re-enter the workforce.

According to a recent study released by the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change leadership.wharton.upenn.edu and the Austin-based Forté Foundation (www.fortefoundation.com, "step-outs" frequently land on a lower corporate rung than the one they left. They're treated like second-class citizens in interviews and snubbed for management slots. Nearly half become self-employed.

Deloitte Touche calls their "step-out" arrangement "The Personal Pursuits Program", with both female and male participation.

© 2005 Technology Place Inc.