Page 25 - MENU Magazine - Jan/Feb 2018

2.
JEN AGG
RESTAURATEUR
AUTHOR, I HEAR SHE’S A REAL BITCH
Agg is a food industry veteran, and is the owner- operator of Toronto gems The Black Hoof, Rhum Corner, Cocktail Bar (at 4.9 out of 5, the best-reviewed cocktail destination on BlogTO) and is co-owner of Grey Gardens and Montreal’s Agrikol. She is a vocal champion of women in the food industry, calling out injustices and the double standards that exist within a male-dominated industry, where Statistics Canada says women are the sole owners of only about 15 per cent of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Agg’s memoir, released in 2017, is the story of how she
has made her way in an environment that has often been unwelcoming, and at times, outright hostile. She urges food industry magnates to recognize and engage against discrimination and harassment and to end the era of overarching male authority. Sta- tistics out of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report that the accommodation and foodservices industry sees more sexual harassment charges filed than any other industry. Agg sends a clear message: It is time for accountability. Women’s presence in the industry is growing, and the culture is changing. Best get used to it.
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MAIN COURSE
INVESTING IN FEMALE CEOS PAYS OFF
Scandinavia’s biggest bank, Nordea Bank AB, has studied almost 11,000 publicly traded companies across the globe and the results are crystal clear: firms with a woman running the show perform far better than the market. The results of the study showed that ‘on average’ companies with a female chief executive officer or a female head of the board of directors had a 25 per cent annualized return since 2009, more than double the 11 per cent delivered by the MSCI World Index.
“If you invested in a company with a woman at the helm, you would have outperformed the market,” says Robert Næss, the portfolio manager at Nor- dea who designed the study.
“Other studies have also shown that diversity is a positive factor, but not that many have also looked at CEOs or such a large number of companies,” says Næss. He notes that most previous studies have looked at the board of directors as it is easier to collect data on this.
The Nordea team studied companies across industries and geographies in both developed and emerging markets with good liquidity—a trading volume of at least USD 2 million a day. Of the near- ly 11,000 companies, only close to 400 had either a female CEO or a female chairperson at year-end during the period 2006-16.
The performance of the stock of these compa- nies was calculated for the following year based on an equal weighting for the year, which gives the same weight, or importance, to each stock instead of stocks being weighted based on their market capitalizations.
Næss also noted that they found a higher number of companies with female CEOs in the United States, China and India. “This had a positive effect on the overall numbers,” says Næss, adding: “When you’re testing a trading strategy on historical data to en- sure its viability, there is always the possibility that the strong results could be a coincidence.”
JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2018 MENU 25
accountability