In today’s edition: the resurgence of J. Crew, why Shari Redstone sold Paramount, and the return of IPOs—with one problem. – Back in action? IPOs are back—but women are missing.
My colleague Lila MacLellan dug into the reopening of the public markets
in a new piece for Fortune. Sixty-one companies filed IPO-related documents during the first two weeks of August in the U.S. Eighty-eight percent had either one or zero women on their boards, and 93% had one or zero women in their C-suites.
Damion Rallis, cofounder of board data firm Free Float Analytics, first uncovered the data, which he called the “Bro-PO” market. “We’ve given up our ideals. We’ve just given up,” he said.
Amid the rollback of DEI—and even years earlier, the
reversals of board gender quota laws in California and elsewhere—there was a prevailing,
optimistic point of view. Companies had already met the 30% board diversity benchmarks, so the work had been done. Laws might have been overturned, Goldman Sachs might have
reversed its pledge to only take public companies that met those standards, but we didn’t need them anymore.
These findings show that that argument may have been naive. There’s always the potential for progress to backslide. And smaller tech companies reaching public markets right now may have never met those benchmarks to begin with.
As the next generation of businesses comes of age in the anti-DEI era, it will only get worse. Sorry to be a bummer! The top tier of public companies may stick to the past decade’s board diversity norms. But for the smaller players, that’s already been left in the past. Read Lila’s full story
here.
Emma Hinchliffeemma.hinchliffe@fortune.comThe Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’
s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
