Our survey approach

The 2024 UK Spencer Stuart Board Index covers the top 150 companies with a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange, according to market value on 30 April 2024. Market capitalisations range from £203 billion (GSK) to £1.75 billion (Bridgepoint). As with previous editions, our research excludes investment trusts and TUI, which has a German two-tier board structure (it delisted from the LSE in June 2024).

The purpose of the survey is to provide a comprehensive review of governance practices in these 150 companies at a given point, in order to identify significant trends over time.

There are nine changes of constituents since last year’s edition, compared with 11 changes in 2023 and 19 changes in 2022.

Comments on changes:

• All nine companies new to this year’s Board Index are included by virtue of increased market value.
• Two of the new entrants (Carnival and IWG) are returning, having dropped out of the top 150 in 2023.
• No companies entered the sample for the first time as a result of listing on the LSE.
• Six companies dropped out of the top 150 during the relevant review period: OSB Group, Safestore Holdings, SSP Group, Travis Perkins, Watches of Switzerland Group, and WH Smith (SSP Group and WH Smith entered the top 150 in 2023 but dropped out this year).
• CRH moved its primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange in September 2023 and subsequently moved from a premium to a standard listing on the LSE.
• Dechra Pharmaceuticals delisted in January 2024 as a result of its acquisition by EQT-backed Freya Bidco Ltd.
• Mediclinic International delisted in June 2023, following its acquisition by a consortium of investment firms.

As in previous editions, industrial and manufacturing companies dominate the sector breakdown among the top 150 FTSE companies.

Data has been compiled from publicly available sources; we have invited the constituents to verify our data. Board composition was taken on 30 April 2024 and remuneration information is taken, for the most part, from the latest published annual report prior to that date.

Minority ethnic diversity data was collected from annual reports. This data includes only those directors who have self-reported as having a minority ethnic background. While we recognise the limitations of the homogenous term “minority ethnic”, we have restricted our research to comply with the framework and targets set out by the Parker Review and the CBI’s Change the Race Ratio campaign.

Due to their unique role, we exclude board chairs from our analysis of the split between executive and non-executive directors, and we also examine their tenure separately. However, chairs are included in our data on non-national directors, age, women, and minority ethnic representation. Data on CEOs and CFOs only includes those who sit on their company’s board.

“Non-national directors” are defined as being of a different nationality from the company on whose board they sit. If a director has multiple nationalities, one of which is British, they are considered a UK national. The new directors category relates to those who joined the board in the 12 months preceding the cut-off date, i.e. between 1 May 2023 and 30 April 2024.

In our tables we state remuneration data in the currency used by the respective companies in their annual report. We convert all figures to sterling for our broader analysis, using the average Bank of England exchange rate for the relevant financial year.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the company secretaries of the top 150 companies with a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange who kindly reviewed data from their own boards as we prepared this 29^th edition of the UK Spencer Stuart Board Index.

Spencer Stuart contributors

London: Rowen Bainbridge, Suniti Chauhan, Chris Gaunt, Sandrine Roseberg, Jonathan Smith, Duncan Lewis, Keith Fryer, Alastair Rolfe
Amsterdam: Alex Efthymiou, Livia Enomoto
Milan: Giovanna Gallì