Meetings
Boards held an average of 8.2 meetings in the period under review, of which an average of 7.5 were scheduled, marginally fewer than the 7.7 recorded in 2023.
30 companies disclosed that they held unscheduled meetings, 40% fewer than in 2023. Indeed, the average number of ad hoc meetings among those companies that reported on them has fallen significantly since the height of the Covid crisis, dropping steadily from 6.9 in 2021 to 3.5 meetings in 2024, finally reverting to the pre-pandemic average.
Ad hoc meetings distribution
| Number of meetings |
Occurrence |
| 1-3 |
19 |
| 4-6 |
8 |
| 7-9 |
0 |
| 10-20 |
3 |
| Non-disclosed |
120 |
External commitments
62% of non-executive board members (658 out of 1057) have at least one additional listed company board commitment, down from 65% in 2022; those that do average 2.5 listed boards. 31% of non-executive directors balance their board responsibilities with executive positions elsewhere.
Chairs hold a total of 1.9 external listed company board mandates on average. 13 chairs have two chair mandates within the 150 FTSE companies featured in this Board Index. 29 chairs have a total of three or more listed company directorships.
31% of CEOs in the top 150 FTSE companies sit on an outside board, up from 27% in 2023.
27% of CFOs sit on an outside board, marginally down from 26% in 2023.
Board evaluation
The current UK Corporate Governance Code recommends that an external independent board evaluation should be conducted every three years. 99% of companies disclosed that they conducted an annual board evaluation during the period under review (the same proportion seen in 2023). 45% (68) of these boards ran an externally facilitated review, up from 41% in 2023.