Campus

Dip in gender parity quota

2012 was the year when 15 of the 193 boardroom seats of the 30 DAX-listed groups were occupied by women – 7.8% in percentage terms. At year end 2013, there were only 12 women – 6.3%. These figures were announced by the Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW – German Institute for Economic Research). At present, there are 183 boardroom seats in DAX-listed companies, 10 of which are held by women. According to a survey conducted by Ernst & Young and published July 17, the real number had in fact fallen to 5.5 percent. Only 9 of the 30 DAX-listed groups have women in the boardroom: Allianz, BASF, Daimler, Deutsche Börse, Deutsche Telekom, Henkel, Munich Re and Deutsche Lufthansa. However, considering that women are about to enter the boardrooms of another two DAX-listed companies, Siemens and Continental, the actual number of female executives should rise again. As Elke Horst, head of gender studies at DIW points out, there is still a long way to go before real relinquishment of male monoculture will be perceived as a foreseeable future possibility. Today, there is no sign whatsoever of more women in major, listed company boardrooms becoming the rule. There are more women in Supervisory Boards. An analysis conducted by the economics database institute Bürgel show that 17.1 percent of Supervisory Board members are women while the percentage in the DAX 30 group is 24.7.

Rises in boardroom fees fast outstripping nominal salary bumps

Many companies have registered record profits over recent years, the German economy is in good health and there was no reason for managers who worked towards this not to reap some benefit. However, despite the drop in turnover and profit in 2013, the boardrooms of the top DAX-30 companies registered a 4 percent increase in earnings, outstripping the 1.4 percent of nominal salaries. The increase in boardroom fees is proving more dynamic than that of nominal salaries and the gap is still widening. 2013 is a repeat performance as shown by a survey carried out by the Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz (DSW) jointly with Gunther Friedl of Munich’s Technische Universität. The 2013 average earnings for a DAX-listed company boardroom member was 3.3 million Euros, in other words 53 times more than an employee of his own company. Some years previously, the gap was much narrower. Speaking in Frankfurt on July 10, Friedl maintained that boardroom earnings were much less performance-based than thought. Lufthansa was a case in point  - bonuses grew by 57 percent despite the downward turn in results.