One of Hong Kong’s oldest companies added two female directors this year, becoming one of only a dozen members in the city’s benchmark index to cross the 30% threshold set by activists for board gender diversity.
CLP Holdings, the 122-year-old utility that provides electricity to much of Hong Kong and operates in Australia, India, Thailand, Taiwan and mainland China, now has five women on its 14-person board. That makes it an outlier on the city’s main Hang Seng Index, where women account for less than 30% of board seats at 68 of the index’s 80 members.
The 36% female representation on the board puts CLP above the target set by the 30% Club, a global campaign promoting corporate gender diversity. It also puts the utility ahead of younger companies such as search giant Baidu and electric carmaker BYD, which have no female board directors.