Macquarie Is Still Grappling With Gender Imbalance, Despite Its Woman CEO 

(Bloomberg) -- Even having Australia’s most high-profile woman chief executive officer isn’t helping Macquarie Group Ltd. break down chronic gender imbalance in the finance industry.

An Australian Institute of Company Directors report Thursday found female board representation has stalled this year. The number of women directors at the nation’s top 200 companies was stuck at 29.7% in June, unchanged from the end of last year, the report showed.

At Macquarie, which appointed Shemara Wikramanayake as CEO last year, male job applicants still outnumber female applicants 70% to 30%, Chairman Peter Warne said on a media call Thursday. The investment bank’s appointment rate is about 40% female, and around 50-50 at the graduate level, he said.

While Macquarie has four women on its 11-member board, increasing female participation levels across the organization was “front of mind,” Warne said. Even so, he said he preferred to “advocate more for targets rather than quotas.”

The AICD report showed 90 ASX-200 boards have reached a target of having 30% women members, but only nine had female chief executives. Four of the top 200 companies still don’t have any female board members, according to the report.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sybilla Gross in Sydney at sgross61@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edward Johnson at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net, Peter Vercoe, Katrina Nicholas

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