Directors Roster.

• Position: Statistical Data Included

In affiliation with Spencer Stuart -- a quarterly record of new director appointments

SINCE THE Directors Roster provides definitive answers to the questions, "Where do new directors come from?," and "Which company boards are recruiting them?," we thought it would be useful to begin the first edition of the Directors Roster in Year 2000 by reviewing director appointment trends of the year just passed. Our data are compiled from the quarterly rosters of new director appointments.

In 1999 DIRECTORS & BOARDS tracked 1,001 executives who were elected to the boards of 788 companies (27 of these executives were recruited to two boards). As shown in Table 1, in a tight race for first place, the most heavily recruited candidates for board vacancies were senior company officers. We categorize these executives as holding such positions as president, chief operating officer, executive vice president, and senior-level finance, marketing, and other staff and operating titles. They topped this list by filling only two more board vacancies than their bosses, those holding chairman and CEO titles.

Whereas our past statistics have consistently revealed CEOs to be the prime board candidates, we've begun to see the trend shifting toward the appointments of senior officers. This became apparent in the first quarter, and continued through the year and again in the fourth quarter (see Table 2). The Roster data support anecdotal tales of CEOs declining more invitations to join boards, and the perception that senior officers -- many of whom are being groomed for CEO positions -- have both the requisite experience and expertise for board service.

The least-recruited for new directorships last year were candidates from academia, representing a mere 3% of the total number of new director appointments, and from the legal and nonprofit sectors, each representing only 4% of the total.

In 1999, only 114 women executives filled new vacancies in the boardroom, representing 11% of the total appointments. While companies continue to champion diversifying their boards, the percentage of women joining boards has remained virtually unchanged since we began our annual tracking of new directors six years ago.

In addition, we identified 40 minority directors -- African-American, Asian, and Hispanic executives -- representing 4% of the total, who were recruited to boards in 1999. And globalization of boards is proceeding at a glacial pace. Only 33 non-U.S. directors were elected to...