Nasdaq to Require BoD Diversity

What if one of the white male directors occasionally identifies as a woman? That seems to satisfy the requirement.

How do they choose the categories that have to be represented? I’m a blue-eyed, left-handed, freckled red-head. Will I be represented?

When you go back to Hell.

Sure, if you’re also a black transexual.

Paywall. What’s the actual policy rule state?

The rule isn’t official, but the proposal is that you must have at least one woman and at least one minority, which means either black, hispanic, Asian, or LGBTQ. So 1 trans “woman” should take care of it.

At first glance this story probably smacks of wokeism taken to the next level. But NASDAQ is there to make money as it is a corporate entity itself that operates exchanges in multiple countries. Look up the Wallenberg family/Investor AB as they’ve been a prominent banking family for a long, long time and they’re the biggest part of NASDAQ.

These exchanges exist to make money for themselves. They’re not a public utility as far as I understand and what they see is that diverse companies have a better chance of being funded and the latest reports indicate that they’re more successful. So NASDAQ, who wants successful companies on their exchange is just following the money. From what I’ve read they’ve proposed giving companies two years to get into compliance. I didn’t read what would happen if they don’t get into compliance but I imagine that the results would be a slightly higher listing fee to be on NASDAQ, so more money for the Wallenberg’s and NASDAQ Inc.

Here’s the thing, not every gay person is openly gay. The same for trans people. So there could be more gays than they know of. Will this mean before getting a job you have to identify as something?

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@Silyak thanks for the summary.

I’m not hugely concerned about the rule, but also not a real fan. I’m all for a meritocracy, so I don’t like quotas of any kind. On the other hand I also don’t believe there’s any space for deliberately (or, sneakily) avoiding having minorities on your board.

Same problem I have with affirmative action, only corporate.

If you are gay, maybe.

It’s women and an “underrepresented” minority, which is: (1) black; (2) Pacific Islander/Member of US Indian Tribe (self-proclaimed, so Senator Pocahontas 1/1024 would work); (3) Hispanic (but maybe not Cuban); (4) certain Asians (Hmong and Vietnamese, I think); and (5) one of the gay/alphabet people of any type.

I am fortunately on boards that trade with the NYSE, but this is coming.

The rating agencies currently demand 2 women.

I’m on Nom & Gov on all boards I am on. It’s hard enough to find experts in the fields of companies without this kind of artificial BS quotas. Too many boards are political or rubber stamp management as it is, because they don’t have a clue what is going on. This will only make things worse.

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My opinion as well. It seems to me (and I could be wrong) that boards have largely become less and less involved over the past 20 years.

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You have no idea. It’s also extremely elitist and political.

I was explicitly told by management of one company (who are Republicans) to avoid all Republican donations or a rating agency would find a reason to recommend against me. (And all the funds just follow their BS.)

Similarly, while being Jewish was fine. Being Orthodox is not (let alone Israeli.). So they use a picture that hides my yarmulke and minimizes my beard.

Very simply the purpose of all this is to create an insular world of oligarchs to lord over the masses.

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What sort of rating board? For the credit worthiness of the corporation or of prospective board executives, what exactly?

It isn’t really sneaky though. It’s entirely obvious to anybody that isn’t drinking the koolaid. Other than woman (and I mean actual biological woman), membership in these so called minority groups can’t be objectively proven in a non-recursive way. (The exception is if you require that membership in LGBT groups requires certain types of body modification or actual participation in certain acts, but nobody that I have seen is advocating anything of the sort).

Thus, in addition to being themselves discriminatory, these rules are inherently unenforceable in an objective way. The far bigger problem, that Jewbacca eluded to, is when the groups that enforce these rules simply enforce them tacitly while coming up with other supposed justifications for their actions.

To be clear, it’s not about avoiding minorities on a board. It’s just reserving the right to populate your board based on merit and thumbing your nose at those who want decisions to be based on membership in fuzzily defined, arbitrary groups.

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They are rating agencies that rate the BOD and governance of companies and tell shareholders how to vote for directors and various shareholder items.

ISS and Glass Lewis are the two main ones.

I’ve had many meetings with them. It used to be subtle, but now it is very clear if you are not a Democrat/Progressive (or at least are stupid enough to not keep your mouth shut) they will tell their clients to vote against you.

The general funds just vote as they are told, since they have no ability to evaluate directors on their own.

Frankly, that’s more worrying than diversity quotas. At least they quotas are out in the open. I’ve heard predictions that the economy will bifurcate along party lines where people only do business with people and companies with which they agree politically. I thought it was crazy, but…

A good confirmation that wokeness is establishment politics. If Goldman Sachs is now woke, one wonders what they’re rebelling against…other than merit, common sense, or any genuine attempt to deal with any structural problem.

One would find less fig leafs in a Vatican museum.

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I work in finance. Not possible. The most ruthless mega bank plays fiddle to this. If BAML decides to play this game what is the expectation? That people found an unwoke bank of that size and influence?

What do you got?

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Nice reference.

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