Why do women earn less than men? The answers offered to this question have changed over time. The issues however have remained largely the same. If we are going to remove this apparent discrimination against 49.7% of the population, we need to understand and address the real causes. A long running mystery The idea that women should earn comparably to men is a relatively modern one. Victorians tended to think that men belonged in...
You’ve just seen a report that concludes what you ‘already knew’. Maybe it’s that having more diversity on a board increases profit, or that eating butter causes heart disease, or that first born children make better CEOs. You pass on, feeling suitably confirmed in your world view. But how reliable is that conclusion? Perhaps, like me, you are not a statistician, so you feel you can’t challenge the complex mathematics? How does a lay person...
So the Bank of England has cut interest rates again, to 0.25%, as ‘the outlook for growth in the short to medium term has weakened markedly’. It is also pumping £70bn new money into the financial sector, that is ‘monetary easing’ or ‘printing money’. Meanwhile, the government is denouncing businesses for running deficits on their pension schemes. These two, apparently unconnected, events are very much two sides of the same newly minted...
Tesco, like Dominic Cummings, has a home in Durham, but not in Barnard Castle. Also, like the No10 guru, Tesco has come in for a lot of criticism about its application of the pandemic rules. It is banking £532m COVID-19 full year rates rebate, despite actually benefiting in many ways from the lockdown. As a result, it is now paying a bumper dividend up 21%. Is Tesco as short-sighted as Cummings? There are not many companies at the moment in the...
“Want Higher Profits? Hire a Female CEO, CFO” The article headline caught my eye. Aren’t we all looking for a magic ingredient that can guarantee financial success? I think that women are disadvantaged and undervalued in business. And this doesn’t have to be the case. The last CEO I appointed was a woman – in a male-dominated industry – and the last board I chaired had a majority of female directors. So, I read this article with great...
Corporate Governance
Economics
Notes From A NED