CII to Train Potential Woman Directors for Meeting New Companies Act Norms
With the Union Government making it mandatory for all listed companies to have a woman director on their board from this year, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Kerala, and the Institute of Directors have come up with a three-day training programme to enable women to equip themselves for the position.
“With the new Companies Act coming into force from April 1, we will need hundreds of qualified women to serve as directors on the board of listed companies in the state,” CII state council chairman and MD of Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services C J George told reporters here the other day.
“The training programme is aimed at senior-level woman professionals, who will be issued a certificate after the training. The new provision can be considered the most remarkable initiative of the Centre with regard to women empowerment,” George said.
In Kerala, there will be a requirement for around 200 women directors, considering the number of listed companies.
Elaborating about the recent activities of CII, George added that the industrialists’ body has plans to bring out a compilation of the best practices adopted as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in Kerala. “Through this, we hope to provide guidelines to companies which are keen to conduct CSR activities. Such a set of guidelines gains significance in the wake of the new Companies Bill 2012 introduced recently.
The third edition of Brand Summit, with the theme ‘Building Brands in the Age of Transparency’, will be held here on March 4.
The speakers at the summit will include State Industrial Development Corporation MD Aruna Sundararajan, film director Bharat Bala and Tommy Hilfiger COO Manish Saksena, among others. CII Kerala will also organise a Business Promotion Mission to Sri Lanka from March 16 to 19.
“The objective of the mission is to identify business, investment, joint venture and trade opportunities in sectors such as coconut products and value-addition in vegetables, agriculture, food processing and marine products,” he said.
George added that the CII had identified around 30 projects under the Kochi Corporation which could be be taken up by the corporate sector as part of their CSR projects.