MITIE Boss Joins Ranks of Whotehall Women

Mitie Boss Joins Ranks Of Whitehall Women


The chief executive of the outsourcing specialist is to
bolster the ranks of female directors on Whitehall departments’ boards.


1:52pm UK,
Tuesday 23 April 2013

Ruby McGregor-Smith will take up her Whitehall role in
the next few months




By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

One of Britain’s top women bosses is to join the ranks of
Whitehall non-executive directors as the Government intensifies pressure on
major companies to increase their complement of female board members.

I understand that Ruby McGregor-Smith, chief executive of the FTSE-250
support services group Mitie, is to join the board of the Department for
Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) during the next few months.

Mrs McGregor-Smith, who was awarded an OBE in the 2012 New Year’s Honours
List, will become the latest non-executive appointee to a Government department
under a Coalition initiative launched in 2010 to improve efficiency in
Whitehall.
Ruby McGregor-Smith (image:
Mitie)
Her recruitment follows the departure from the DCMS board of Lord Coe and the
anticipated exit of Sir Peter Bazalgette, the new chairman of the Arts
Council.

Mrs McGregor-Smith, who has been chief executive of Mitie since 2007, will
become the twentieth female non-executive appointed as part of the Whitehall
efficiency drive.

Led by Lord Browne, the former BP chief executive who serves as the lead
non-executive across Government departments, the initiative involves around 60
leading figures from the business community, including Sir Andrew Witty, chief
executive of GlaxoSmithKline, Paul Walsh, chief executive of Diageo, and Ian
Cheshire, who runs the DIY retailer Kingfisher.

Roughly one-third of the 60 non-executives are women, reflecting the
Government’s determination to avoid being accused of failing to employ
sufficient women in boardroom posts at a time when it is pressing UK plc to do
the same.

Research published earlier this month by Cranfield International Centre for
Women Leaders showed that the proportion of women promoted to the boards of
public companies had slowed, jeopardising the prospects of reaching a target of
a quarter of boardroom roles being occupied by women by 2015.