The Lloyd’s List Podcast: Can diversity-linked loans close shipping’s gender gap?
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Navigator Gas chief executive Mads Peter Zacho is fully aware of shipping’s shortcomings when it comes to gender diversity, but he wants to do something about it and has taken the bold first step of linking a $200m loan facility to ambitious targets to up the level of senior women in management. So can diversity-linked loans help close the maritime gender gap?
SOMETHING groundbreaking has happened in shipping. Navigator Gas, best known for owning and operating the world’s largest fleet of handysize gas tankers, this month revealed that they had done something no other shipowner has done before.
The US-listed LPG carrier has taken out the industry’s first gender diversity-linked loan, drawing down on a $200m facility agreement that has its interest rate based on whether the company meets targets to increase the number of women they have in leadership roles.
One of the key performance indicators is linked to environmental sustainability and the other to moving 35% of women in the company into leadership roles in the next five years.
Given that none of the company’s current C-suite roles are held by women, and only one of the seven board members is female, it represents a bold move.
The Lloyd’s List Podcast invited chief executive Mads Peter Zacho to talk to markets editor Michelle Wiese Bockmann to discuss the challenge he has set himself and why he believes it is important to change working culture and address shipping’s gender diversity gap.