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Sweden’s state-owned firms lack diverse leadership

Despite promises by the current government to make diversity a priority, the number directors in Sweden’s state-owned companies held by people of non-Nordic background has dropped by 50 percent.

Currently, only one out of 146 board positions in Sweden’s 21 largest state-owned companies is held by someone from outside the Nordic region, according to a recent report by the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

Apoteket, Systembolaget and Svenska Spel all lack a single person with non-Nordic background on their boards or in their top management, writes SvD.

When SvD first looked at diversity in state-owned enterprises in November 2006, a total of two leadership posts were held by people from someplace other than the Nordic countries.

At the time, Industry Minister Maud Olofsson criticized the outgoing government for not doing enough to promote diversity and promised the incoming Alliance government would do better.

Olofsson explained that having a board which reflects the market in terms of ethnic background, gender, and age has commercial advantages, according to SvD.

But 18 months later, there is little sign of change at the top of Sweden’s state-owned companies when it comes to diversity in the board of directors.

Top management in Sweden’s state-owned firms is slightly more diverse however, with seven of 183 positions going to people with non-Nordic backgrounds—up from a total of three positions in the autumn of 2006.

But six of the seven non-Nordic managers are from Europe, and a quarter of the companies lack any active efforts to promote diversity, reports SvD.

“It has been hard to recruit diverse candidates. The traditional sources from which we recruit don’t have this type of diversity. That is why last spring we started working on broadening our recruiting sources. We’ve visited with companies and arranged board seminars, but so far we haven’t reaped any benefits from our efforts,” Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, an advisor to Olofsson, said to SvD.

The person responsible for recruiting board members to state-owned enterprises, Lars Erik Fredriksson, emphasized that the networks use for recruiting are very “Sweden-based” and have few members with foreign backgrounds.

“It sounds a little hopeless, but despite everything, in order to get strong board members, they need to have come from leadership-level positions. Today we presumably see a higher incidence of people with non-Nordic background in companies, at least at the middle-management level. And that way, I definitely believe that it will increase in the future,” Fredriksson said to SvD.

While he failed to state a specific goal for the recruitment of non-Nordic board members, Fredriksson said that he and his colleagues “continue to work with the different networks which exist in Sweden.”

FARMING

WTO rules US tariffs on Spanish olives breach rules

A US decision to slap steep import duties on Spanish olives over claims they benefited from subsidies constituted a violation of international trade rules, the World Trade Organisation ruled Friday.

WTO rules US tariffs on Spanish olives breach rules
Farmers had just begun harvesting olives in southern Spain when former US President Donald Trump soured the mood with the tariffs' announcement. Photo: Jorge Guerrero/AFP

Former US president Donald Trump’s administration slapped extra tariffs on Spain’s iconic agricultural export in 2018, considering their olives were subsidised and being dumped on the US market at prices below their real value.

The combined rates of the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties go as high as 44 percent.

The European Commission, which handles trade policy for the 27 EU states, said the move was unacceptable and turned to the WTO, where a panel of experts was appointed to examine the case.

In Friday’s ruling, the WTO panel agreed with the EU’s argument that the anti-subsidy duties were illegal.

But it did not support its stance that the US anti-dumping duties violated international trade rules.

The panel said it “recommended that the United States bring its measures into conformity with its obligations”.

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis hailed the ruling, pointing out that the US duties “severely hit Spanish olive producers.”

Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid, called by the olive sector
Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid called by the olive sector to denounce low prices of olive oil and the 25 percent tariff that Spanish olives and olive oil faced in the United States. (Photo by PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP)
 

“We now expect the US to take the appropriate steps to implement the WTO ruling, so that exports of ripe olives from Spain to the US can resume under normal conditions,” he said.

The European Commission charges that Spain’s exports of ripe olives to the United States, which previously raked in €67 million ($75.6 million) annually, have shrunk by nearly 60 percent since the duties were imposed.

The office of the US Trade Representative in Washington did not immediately comment on the ruling.

According to WTO rules, the parties have 60 days to file for an appeal.

If the United States does file an appeal though, it would basically amount to a veto of the ruling.

That is because the WTO Appellate Body — also known as the supreme court of world trade — stopped functioning in late 2019 after Washington blocked the appointment of new judges.

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