British American Tobacco
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Board diversity
Bringing a balance to governance
Our Non-Executive Directors come from broad industry and professional backgrounds, with varied experience and expertise aligned to the needs of our business.
The Board values the benefits of diversity in all its forms, within its own membership and at all levels of the Group.
In 2017, 31% of our Board was female. In turn, seven different nationalities were represented among our Board members: American (2), Brazilian (2), British (4), Canadian (2), German (1), Greek (1) and Irish (1).
The Board promotes diversity and encourages initiatives to improve diversity in senior management roles, in areas including gender, ethnicity and nationality.
The Nominations Committee is responsible for regularly reviewing the composition of both the Board and Management Board, to ensure they have an appropriate balance of skills, expertise and knowledge, and ensuring that all appointments are made on merit against objective criteria and with due regard for the benefits of diversity.
Our Board Diversity Policy sets out the Board’s commitment to the following objectives:
- considering all aspects of diversity when reviewing the composition of, and succession planning for, the Board and Management Board
- considering a wide pool of candidates of both genders for appointment to the Board
- maintaining at least 30 per cent representation of females on our Board, with the ambition of progressing towards further gender balance
- giving preference, where appropriate, to engagement of executive search firms that are accredited under the Standard and Enhanced Codes of Conduct for Executive Search Firms, which include gender diversity
- supporting the oversight of the development of internal senior managers to create a diverse pipeline of high-performing potential Executive Directors and Management Board members.
We are a diverse employer. There were 143 nationalities represented at management level within our Group in 2017, 35 within our executive cadre, and we have female executives on all of our senior functional and geographical leadership teams.
Our specific diversity ambition is to achieve, by 2020, a sustainable improvement in senior representation of women, as well as nationalities that we see as key to our success.