IMPACT Newsletter: February 2023

It has been a short, yet busy month at Leverton. We had a great turnout for the Duncan Coombe session on ‘Managing Difficult Conversations’- very topical right now with falling compensation and tough decisions.

At the end of last week I took the team to Bordeaux to celebrate all their input into Leverton. It was a great year professionally for them and so enjoyable seeing this progress the company and IMPACT.

Here are the top news articles from February;

The Plan to Double the Number of UK Women Fund Managers in Just 3 Years
There are currently around 200 female money managers in the UK but if 60 more are trained each year, the number of women running funds in the country could almost double by 2026. That’s far more progress than has been made in the last five years — and also happens to be the pitch of investing veteran Helena Morrissey, who’s taking things into her own hands via the Pathway Programme.

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Hanneke Smits: ‘It might take a generation before the 30% Club doesn’t need to exist’
In this interview with Investment Week, Hanneke Smits, CEO of BNY Mellon Investment Management, shares her priorities as newly-appointed global chair of the 30% Club, including pushing for more women in senior executive roles.
Taking the helm of the 30% Club seems a natural progression for Hanneke Smits as she brings to the role her experiences as an investor, as well as a senior leader who has supported women around her and championed diversity during her 30-year career.

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UK executive target for women met three years ahead of schedule
Women occupy two out of five board seats at FTSE 350 companies, reaching the target three years early, according to a government-backed campaign to encourage more female representation in executive roles. The annual FTSE Women Leaders Review found 40.2 per cent of directors at the UK’s largest listed companies were women last year, surpassing the voluntary threshold set for 2025, and up from just 9.5 per cent 11 years ago.

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Working mums fear ‘fake’ flexibility as two fifths complete work tasks out of hours, study findsTwo fifths (40 per cent) of mothers in employment report needing to complete work tasks outside of normal hours, creating concerns that offers of flexibility for mums can be ‘fake’, a study has found. The survey of 2,152 working mums with children under the age of 18, conducted by Careering into Motherhood, found that despite the vast majority (92 per cent) of working mothers saying that their employer is fully or partially receptive to flexible working requests, there are still reports of managers expecting full-time work to be completed within reduced hours, as well as negative responses to the requests.
Notwithstanding that employees have the legal right to request flexible work, almost four in 10 working mums (38 per cent) had not asked for any flexible work, with 46 per cent believing that asking for flexibility impacts future promotion opportunities.

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