Grey remains the new black for company boards
boards of India Inc, it is still age and experience that rules the roost. The average age of boards is 58.67 years — falling marginally from 59.56 years over the last decade — at NSE-listed companies. This indicates that while there has been some infusion of younger blood, boards are still largely grey.
Data compiled for ET by primeinfobase.com showed, however, that the number of younger directors has been rising steadily. As of the start of September, 13.89% directors were below the age of 45 (2,340 of total 16,837) across 2,107 NSE-listed companies. This compares to 10.72% (or 1,249 of 11,643 directors) across 1,481 companies as of March 31, 2014.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM LucknowIIML Advanced Programme in Human Resource ManagementVisitIIM KozhikodeIIMK General Management Programme for Business ExcellenceVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Leadership in AIVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Chief Digital OfficerVisitCurrently there are 956 independent directors below 45.
This number is over three times that of March 31, 2014, when there were 312 independent directors. Both these numbers have been seeing a steady rise over the last 10 years.
Similarly, directors below the age of 40 have risen to 1,368 (590 independent) as of early-September, compared to 631 (118 independent) as of March 31, 2014. There are now 210 directors under 30 (of them 86 independent), compared to 95 (18 independent) a little over a decade ago.
Experts say that even with the Great Board Refresh of 2024 — when 1,551 independent directors in 825 NSE-listed companies complete a 10-year tenure by April 1 — Indian boards are unlikely to get much younger anytime soon. Most companies
