Michel Landel, CEO of Sodexo, is a director of Catalyst Inc., a feminist campaigning organisation. No, seriously, he is

Now this is definitely one for the ‘You couldn’t make this stuff up!’ file.

My thanks to Ken for forwarding me a couple of Bloomberg links a moment ago. The first is a profile of the French multinational, Sodexo, the second a profile of Michel Landel, the company’s CEO:

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/people.asp?ticker=SDXOF

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=327974&ticker=SDXOF

Monsieur Landel’s estimated annual compensation is around £2.7 million – fair enough, Sodexo is a very large company. But the detail in the profile which struck me most forcefully was that he’s also a director of Catalyst Inc. My first thought was, ‘Well, that’s surely not Catalyst, the feminist organisation which campaigns for more women on boards, and whose reports showing a correlation between more women on boards and improved financial performance are still used to this day by people misrepresenting correlation as causation?’

To my utter astonishment, it is the same organisation. Bloomberg’s profile of Catalyst:

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=24914518

I see Ilene Lang (‘Ms’ Ilene Lang, needless to say) remains the CEO of Catalyst Inc at the age of 69. She has yet to respond to a public challenge we made a year ago:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/our-public-challenge-of-ilene-lang-president-and-ceo-of-catalyst-an-american-organisation-campaigning-for-increased-female-representation-in-boardrooms/

Does Monsieur Landel, a leading businessman earning £2.7 million p.a., not understand the difference between correlation and causation? Or is he supporting the drive for more women on boards because he’s unaware of the evidence that this policy direction must harm his company’s financial performance in time, at the expense of Sodexo’s shareholders? Our briefing paper on the matter:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/

Senior business executives, both men and women, are actively destroying a cornerstone of capitalism – the right of companies to appoint board directors as they see fit. What times we live in. We look forward to the Left finding a wealth-generating system to replace capitalism when the feminists have finally destroyed it, with the keen support of men such as Monsieur Landel, David Cameron, Vince Cable, Sir Roger Carr… too many to name.