Biggest IPOs, Under Scrutiny, Debut With More Female Directors
- Study finds women held 22% of seats at 2019’s largest listings
- Expectations for boardroom diversity drive a shift at the top
People celebrate Lyft’s initial public offering at the company's service center in Los Angeles in 2019.
Photographer: Kyle Grillot/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Among the 25 largest public offerings last year, only one hit the market with an all-male board, the cannabis product company Greenlane Holdings Inc. That’s a huge change from the previous five years, when about half the boards had no female directors.
At six of the biggest companies that went public last year, women held 30% or more of the board seats, according to a six-year analysis of the largest initial public offerings, released Thursday by the advocacy group 2020 Women on Boards.