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Top corporations resist quota for hiring women execs

Germany's top companies pledged Wednesday to publish new targets for placing more women in their boardrooms but resisted fresh calls for legal quotas to rectify a wide gender gap.

Top corporations resist quota for hiring women execs
Photo: DPA

The 30 corporations listed on Frankfurt’s blue-chip DAX index announced the plans for this year at a meeting with government ministers on the dramatic lack of female executives in Europe’s biggest economy.

“Women are under-represented on the staff of many companies, on executive boards, on supervisory boards as well as in top management positions,” the firms said in a joint statement.

“The companies will set their own specific and differentiated targets for increasing the number of women on their staff and in leadership positions, define their own corporation-specific timeframes and regularly report on their goals, measures taken and achieved results.”

German business is under pressure following recent calls from women’s rights groups, the country’s top-selling news magazine Der Spiegel and Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen for legally binding quotas for women in management.

Von der Leyen, who would like to see an average of 30 percent female representation on supervisory and executive boards among listed companies by 2018, lamented a lack of progress at Wednesday’s meeting.

“I’m not seeing concrete statements, figures, strategies, timetables,” she said. “We are at the start of a process— it has to have a target and an end.”

The proportion of women on executive or supervisory boards at Germany’s 200 biggest companies is currently at a dismal 3.2 percent, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) said in its latest study released in January.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the fact that voluntary targets introduced in 2001 for companies to boost their ranks of female executives had produced only “modest results.”

While she has resisted calls for imposed quotas, she warned industry in February that if it failed to make headway, Berlin would intervene.

Family Minister Kristina Schröder, who called Wednesday’s meeting, said if the companies did not triple the number of the female top executives by 2013, the government would step in by mandating them to set firm targets.

AFP/rm

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BUSINESS

France’s EDF hails €10billion profit, despite huge UK nuclear charge

French energy giant EDF has unveiled net profit of €10billion and cut its massive debt by increasing nuclear production after problems forced some plants offline.

France's EDF hails €10billion profit, despite huge UK nuclear charge

EDF hailed an “exceptional” year after its loss of €17.9billion in 2022.

Sales slipped 2.6 percent to €139.7billion , but the group managed to slice debt by €10billion euros to €54.4billion.

EDF said however that it had booked a €12.9 billion depreciation linked to difficulties at its Hinkley Point nuclear plant in Britain.

The charge includes €11.2 billion for Hinkley Point assets and €1.7billion at its British subsidiary, EDF Energy, the group explained.

EDF announced last month a fresh delay and additional costs for the giant project hit by repeated cost overruns.

“The year was marked by many events, in particular by the recovery of production and the company’s mobilisation around production recovery,” CEO Luc Remont told reporters.

EDF put its strong showing down to a strong operational performance, notably a significant increase in nuclear generation in France at a time of historically high prices.

That followed a drop in nuclear output in France in 2022. The group had to deal with stress corrosion problems at some reactors while also facing government orders to limit price rises.

The French reactors last year produced around 320.4 TWh, in the upper range of expectations.

Nuclear production had slid back in 2022 to 279 TWh, its lowest level in three decades, because of the corrosion problems and maintenance changes after
the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hinkley Point C is one of a small number of European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) worldwide, an EDF-led design that has been plagued by cost overruns
running into billions of euros and years of construction delays.

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