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Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Ursula Burns launches a SPAC, Kohl’s faces a fight with activist investors, and one all-male board stands alone. Have a thoughtful Tuesday.
– One too many. Our past coverage has made it abundantly clear that 2020 was a downright awful year for women. But look hard enough and you can unearth a few positive trends that played out in the year we’d all like to forget.
Here’s one: Of 2020’s top 25 U.S. IPOs, just one company went public with an all-male board. Yes, that’s still one too many, but consider that two years prior, 12 companies did the same.
Overall, women held 24% of board seats at the companies representing the 25 largest IPOs last year, up from 22% in 2019 and 11% in 2018, according to analysis from 50/50 Women on Boards, an organization advocating for gender parity in boardrooms. Two of the 25 companies went public with gender neutral boards, Rocket Companies and Reynolds Consumer Products.
The improving trend likely reflects, in part, the attention institutional investors like State Street Global Advisors and BlackRock have paid to boardroom diversity since 2017 and 2018, respectively. Last year, Goldman Sachs took its own stand, vowing to not underwrite the public offerings of companies without diverse boards. And in December, Nasdaq proposed a rule requiring the companies listed on its main U.S. exchange to have at least one female director and one “diverse” director, meaning a person who “self-identifies as either an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+.”
Those kind of actions seem to be moving the needle, the 50/50 report says, along with “more transparency, stricter investment rules, heightened shareholder expectations, and research by business thought leaders, reconfirming that companies with women directors outperform companies without.”
As for the lone company to go public with an all=male board? It’s data provider Dun & Bradstreet Holdings, which says it is “actively recruiting highly qualified female candidates to complement existing leadership.”
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Copy that. Former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns is behind a new special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC. Plum Acquisition Corp., now one of just a few SPACs led by women, is planning to raise $300 million and seek a merger with a company with "distinct machine learning and AI-driven advantages." Bloomberg
- Retail face-off. Kohl's, led by CEO Michelle Gass, is facing a potentially tough proxy fight from activist investors. The group, which collectively owns 9.5% of Kohl's shares, nominated nine candidates to the retailer's 12-member board of directors, arguing that too few current directors have retail experience. Fortune
- Georgia playbook. Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler's first major project after losing her Senate seat is Greater Georgia Action, a group looking to register GOP voters in the state. The organization is backed by Loeffler's own wealth, and it's aiming to compete with Fair Fight, Stacey Abrams's Georgia voter registration effort. Fortune
- Joining up. Saudi women can now join the country's military after a recent change in law. Women's professions—among other rights—have been severely limited in Saudi Arabia, mostly to teaching and, more recently, to working for lingerie and cosmetics businesses, which are required to employ only women. Women are now eligible to serve as soldiers, lance corporals, corporals, sergeants, and staff sergeants. Bloomberg
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Flying Fish Partners managing partner Adriane M. Brown will join American Airlines' board of directors. Glossier founder and CEO Emily Weiss and e.l.f. Beauty CFO Mandy Fields join the board of directors for Allbirds, the shoe brand. Reddit hired Bank of America's Allison Miller as chief information security officer and VP of trust. MAC Cosmetics hired Revlon's Aïda Moudachirou Rebois as SVP, global marketing. Carrot Fertility hired the Center for Reproductive Health & Gynecology's Dr. Raquel Hammonds as director, integrative & preventative medicine. Heidrick & Struggles promoted Lia Randazzo, global practice director for CEO and board, to director of global marketing.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Protest movement. More than 1,000 protesters took to the streets of Yangon on Monday to fight back against Myanmar's military coup. The protesters want to return power to Aung San Suu Kyi and are pushing for her release from detention. AP
- Settling in. As CFO Melinda Whittington prepares to step into the CEO role at La-Z-Boy, the company is seeing a surge in demand as consumers spend more on home furnishings amid the pandemic. Her first challenges will be meeting that demand—and planning for a future when consumer spending on furniture dips to more typical levels. Wall Street Journal
- Pause on pay. The U.K. decided on a compromise over its gender pay gap reporting requirements. Aiming to provide some leeway to businesses struggling during the pandemic without discontinuing the effort for a second year, companies will have a six-month grace period before any enforcement action is taken against them. Guardian
ON MY RADAR
Kim Kardashian's divorce lawyer Laura Wasser on what makes a marriage work Wall Street Journal
Amy Poehler is into what Gen Z is selling New York Times
Megan Thee Stallion and Rep. Maxine Waters on misogynoir, saying no, and the genius of WAP Harper's Bazaar
PARTING WORDS
"I’m just going to draw a star and the moon in one of my passports."
-Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant, on becoming the youngest American to travel to space. She'll be one of four people on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket later this year.