New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, on behalf of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers Retirement System of the City of New York and New York City Board of Education Retirement System, announced a variant of the shareholder proposal associated with the Boardroom Accountability Project 3.0 campaign (reported on here). The new form of proposal calls on four S&P 500 companies that lack apparent racial and ethnic diversity on the senior management team to adopt a Rooney Rule-like recruitment policy for senior executives (including the CEO) requiring consideration of qualified female and racially/ethnically diverse candidates for external hires (i.e., when recruiting outside the company, regardless of whether the company uses an outside search firm). According to the release, the Boardroom Accountability Project 3.0 campaign has prompted at least 23 companies to adopt the requested Rooney Rule-like policy for their director and CEO searches.
See our prior report: "NYC Comptroller Negotiates Board & CEO 'Rooney Rule' Policies"; this new release: "New Study on Board Governance of Largest Public Companies Highlights Growing Diversity and Demonstrates Need for Greater Representation in the Executive Suite" and the associated report; and additional resources on our Shareholder Proposals, Institutional Investors, Board Diversity, and Racial Equality & Diversity pages. This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!