Tarsha Finney: Annie, you were the Global Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Lend Lease based in New York from 2008 - 2010, as well as having been the president of the National Association of Women in Construction here in Sydney (2006-2007) as part of that position you made a case to Lend Lease for the pursuit of equity. What was that? Annie Tennant: There is a business case for diversity and it has been around for a while. The top SO companies for gender diversity in the Fortune 500 outperformed the NASDAQ by 28.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 22.4% over a 10 year period. In addition, almost 90% of Fortune 500 companies have women on their board of directors (2006). Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women achieved higher financial performance than those companies with the lowest. There is evidence that Boards with at least three women have an even better financial performance with Return on Equity at 16.7% (average 11.5%) and Return on Invested Capital at 10% (average 6.2%).
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