Who should be on a company’s Board of Directors? Ideally, whoever a company designates, and that should be people who have an interest in the company’s welfare. But now, the NASDAQ has taken an unprecedented step of filing a proposal with the FEC that if passed, will allow them to require that companies listed now need to have at least least two officers on their boards who are in one of three categories: woman, “minority”, or sodomite.
Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) today filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to adopt new listing rules related to board diversity and disclosure. If approved by the SEC, the new listing rules would require all companies listed on Nasdaq’s U.S. exchange to publicly disclose consistent, transparent diversity statistics regarding their board of directors. Additionally, the rules would require most Nasdaq-listed companies to have, or explain why they do not have, at least two diverse directors, including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as either an underrepresented minority1 or LGBTQ+. Foreign companies and smaller reporting companies would have additional flexibility in satisfying this requirement with two female directors.
The goal of the proposal is to provide stakeholders with a better understanding of the company’s current board composition and enhance investor confidence that all listed companies are considering diversity in the context of selecting directors, either by including at least two diverse directors on their boards or by explaining their rationale for not meeting that objective. As part of rationale for the new requirements, Nasdaq’s proposal presents an analysis of over two dozen studies that found an association between diverse boards and better financial performance and corporate governance.
Under the proposal, all Nasdaq-listed companies will be required to publicly disclose board-level diversity statistics through Nasdaq’s proposed disclosure framework within one year of the SEC’s approval of the listing rule. The timeframe to meet the minimum board composition expectations set forth in the proposal will be based on a company’s listing tier. Specifically, all companies will be expected to have one diverse director within two years of the SEC’s approval of the listing rule. Companies listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Global Market will be expected to have two diverse directors within four years of the SEC’s approval of the listing rule. Companies listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market will be expected to have two diverse directors within five years of the SEC’s approval. For companies that are not in a position to meet the board composition objectives within the required timeframes, they will not be subject to delisting if they provide a public explanation of their reasons for not meeting the objectives.
“Nasdaq’s purpose is to champion inclusive growth and prosperity to power stronger economies,” said Adena Friedman, President and CEO, Nasdaq. “Our goal with this proposal is to provide a transparent framework for Nasdaq-listed companies to present their board composition and diversity philosophy effectively to all stakeholders; we believe this listing rule is one step in a broader journey to achieve inclusive representation across corporate America.”
Nasdaq will also introduce a partnership with Equilar, the leading provider of corporate leadership data solutions, to aid Nasdaq-listed companies with board composition planning challenges. Through the Equilar BoardEdge platform, hosting nearly one million profiles and the Equilar Diversity Network, and by leveraging existing services through the Nasdaq Center for Board Excellence, the partnership will enable Nasdaq-listed companies that have not yet met the proposed diversity objectives to access a larger community of highly-qualified, diverse, board-ready candidates to amplify director search efforts. (source)
Now the concept itself of having women, minorities, or sodomites on one’s board is not unique. There are plenty of companies who have women on their Boards of Directors, just as there are many who have “minorities” as well as sodomites on their boards. In fact, if a company has such on their boards, given the trends to “virtue signal”, often times such things are bragged about in the name of showing how “open minded” a company claims to be, and companies actively seek out such people in order to give a certain image to others.
Americans have no problem putting such groups into positions of major authority and power as is demonstrated over and over from small to large scale examples. The question really is, why does the NASDAQ want a formal blessing from the government to actively engage in what is difficult to describe other than as discrimination by way of that given a situation between two candidates, to prefer the one who is part of one of the three above mentioned arguably “protected classes”? There is no good argument that can be made about this other than that the NASDAQ wants to actively discriminate against companies who do not submit to this
The issue here is not really about women or minorities (although companies should be free to choose whoever they believe is best suited for their Boards regardless of gender or race), but the sodomite one, because one cannot help what gender one is born as or what group of people one comes from, but one can help whether or not one sodomizes another person. The first and second options are not choices, the third one is. This poses a major problem for Christians because if one is a Christian, one cannot accept this behavior because it is immoral. However, what the NASDAQ is saying is that their morality can be forced using the law over that of Christians.
What we are seeing is more than just a particular incident. This is another move in a larger trend towards steps that legally disenfranchise Christians and push any form of Christianity out from society. Likewise, given the support of sodomitic behavior in society, the potential this could pass FEC permission is rather high.
Christianity has been in serious decline in the US for a long time. Given the current trends, it is possible that in the future, to be a Christian will be a difficult task, where just as in the past, one is a hated minority that must worship in secret, knowing that one’s future hope is in Christ, that He will return, and make all things right.