Only 11% of S&P 500 Companies Have CEOs of Color, and It Gets Worse …

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Only 11% of S&P 500 Companies Have CEOs of Color, and It Gets Worse …

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A new study titled “The Face of Corporate America” examines the racial and gender figures for S&P 500 chief executive officers. The analysis was done by MyLogIQ, Public company intelligence provider, and it shows that only 11% of the CEOs among the companies are people of color. The gender figures and figures about female CEOs of color were even worse.

CEOs of color were defined as those who are Latin American, Black, Indian, Asian or of mixed race. Fifty-one were men of color, based on a specific count of the leaders.

Additionally, the analysis showed that only 6% were female. This translates to only four CEOs.

While much of the senior management and many board members at large companies have been mostly white, the research shows the extent to which the problem is pervasive. MyLogIQ examined 504 CEOs (because Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Globe Life, Howmet Aerospace and Synopsis have co-CEOs).

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The study also looked at the CEOs by age. Thirty-four percent were aged 56 to 60. Twenty-seven percent were 61 to 65. The youngest was Mark Zuckerberg at 35. The oldest was Warren Buffett at 89.

Thirty-eight percent had held their jobs for one to five years, and 31% had been in their jobs for six to 10 years. The longest-serving CEO was Warren Buffett at 50 years. The average tenure was 7.4 years.

A look at pay showed that 140 CEOs made between $10.0 million and $14.9 million last year. Some 115 made between $6.0 million and $9.9 million, and 103 made between $15.0 million and $19.9 million. The highest-paid CEO was Sundar Pichai, the head of Alphabet, who made $260 million. The lowest-paid was Jack Dorsey of Twitter, who made $1.

The takeaway from the study is that the number of CEOs of color and those who are women are a tiny part of the universe. Anecdotally, these numbers have not changed much in recent years. And there is no reason to believe that will change.

The corner office is a place of segregation.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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