New Report On California Board Gender Diversity Mandate

As required by SB 826, California's board gender diversity law, the California Secretary of State has posted its March 2020 report on the status of compliance with the new law. The report combines information gathered in the July 2019 report (see this PubCo post) with data for the additional six-month period of July 1, 2019 through December 31, 2019. The report counts 625 publicly held corporations that identified principal executive offices in California in their 2019 10-Ks, but indicates that only 330 of these "impacted corporations" had filed a 2019 California Publicly Traded Corporate Disclosure Statement, which would reflect their compliance with the board gender diversity requirement. Of the 330 companies that had filed, 282 reported that they were in compliance with the board gender diversity mandate.

As you may recall, California's board gender diversity legislation requires that publicly held companies (defined as corporations listed on major U.S. stock exchanges) with principal executive offices located in California, no matter where they are incorporated, include minimum numbers of women on their boards of directors. Under the new law, each of these publicly held companies was required to have a minimum of one woman on its board of directors by the close of 2019. That minimum increases to two by December 31, 2021, if the corporation has five directors, and to three women directors if the corporation has six or more directors. Notably, the statute provides that a "female director having held a seat for at least a portion of the year shall not be a violation." (See this PubCo post.)

Section 301.3(c) and (d) of the California Corporations Code required the Secretary's office to publish on its website by July 1, 2019, a report "documenting the number of domestic and foreign corporations whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation's SEC 10-K form, are located in California and who have at least one female director," with an updated report posted by March 1, 2020 and annually thereafter. The report is also required to provide the number of publicly held corporations that moved their U.S. headquarters to or from California during the last year and the number of publicly held corporations that were subject to the requirements during the preceding year, but were no longer publicly traded. The legislation also authorizes the imposition of fines for violations of the new law in the amounts of $100,000 for the first...

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