If results of a SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) survey are anything to go by, Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies have a lot of work to do in terms of facilitating the rise of black professionals to decision making positions within their ranks.
According to a SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) survey most company directors, chief executives, and chief financial officers in Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies are white males.
Lamented Saica CEO, Terence Nombembe: “Saica CEO Terence Nombembe: “Seventy-five percent of directorships are still held by whites at present, and 87 percent by males – so obviously a lot of work still has to be done on transformation.”
However, Nombembe acknowledged the strides that were being made in transformation within the younger generation, which was a result of young black chartered accountants (SA) below the age of 40 being appointed as directors.
:”If we analyse the racial split of directorships by age, we see that for directors under 40, white and black are almost at parity; whites predominate by barely a tenth of a percent.
“For ages 41-50, whites outnumber blacks by a factor of two-and-a-half. But over the age of 51, there are five times as many white directors as black ones, and ten times as many in the over-61 age group,” he said.
Significant from a transformation perspective, women – and black women in particular – filled a higher percentage of directorships in the under-50 age group, than they did among the over-50s.