New diversity award at Rainmakers aims to Change tide in finance community

Vic Stewart announces new organisation at awards

Gareth Davies from Michael Page talks about the importance of diversity in corporate finance world.

 

Last Thursday saw the 5th annual North West Rainmaker Awards, at the Hilton Deansgate Hotel in Manchester.

The Rainmaker Awards are a celebration of the corporate finance community in the region – with awards presented to the best teams in the legal, advisory and investment sectors, as well as the best deals in a variety of categories – including private company, public company and overall M&A transaction.

The awards stand apart from others in that they are shortlisted and voted for by the community themselves.

This year was the third year that Michael Page had been the headline sponsor and after our input last year I was asked by the organisers at TheBusinessDesk.com for my feedback on building the success and improvement of the awards and format.

Gareth Davies

Fresh from picking up responsibility for the HR recruitment team within our North West business, and remembering the comment of Gina Raymond (a guest of ours on the night and a HR Director for a private equity investment in the centre of Manchester) that there seemed to be far too few women in the room, I posed the question of whether there was room for a further award – something around trying to increase Diversity & Inclusion within the corporate finance community.

TheBusinessDesk.com liked the idea but we agreed that we needed to put a bit more meat on the bones and land it well – this was not about alienating a largely white, male group of fantastic professionals who the region should be very proud of, but more to see if we could encourage a little more diversity – and not just across gender but across all under-represented groups.

We carried on talking and thinking, and it was at an International Women’s Day event at KPMG in March that I picked up the conversation with Grant Berry, Investment Partner at Northedge and Vic Stewart,  Finance Director at the Alchemist, a Palatine portfolio business in the centre of Manchester.

Both agreed that such an award would be welcome and positive, and Vic shared that she had already been thinking about the opportunity for a networking group for females in dealmaking (be they accountants, lawyers, advisors, investors, insurers) to share experiences and help each other up to create more of a balance in the make-up of the corporate finance community.

So we decided to do it, but we needed a name. ‘Women in CF’ was touted but quickly rejected; ‘Agent of Change’ set a better tone but wasn’t particularly user-friendly. ‘Diversity Role Model’ or ‘D&I Champion’ seemed too obvious.

When we found Simone Roche – founder of Northern Power Women – in our offices following a meeting around NPW with our Managing Director, Graham Lucas, I sought her opinion. “What are you trying to do?” Influence positive change. “What are the Awards called?” Rainmakers. “Changemaker?” And it just felt right.

Fast-forward to shortlisting day at DLA Piper in mid-May and when the category was debated there was still some confusion. Was it social change?

Was it someone who’s really made a difference? When the conversation refocused on it being around diversity and inclusion within the community, there were still some lacking comprehension of what this was about and why it was important – which probably shows exactly why it is so important. Still, we emerged with a strong shortlist of three females and two males who had all been nominated by their peers as drivers of better diversity and inclusion in their teams, and in the wider market.

Independently, Vic had taken her idea from the KPMG event with her and having found through research done by the British Venture Capitalist Association that only 6% of senior positions in private equity are held by women started to form the foundations for the 6% Club.

The club will seek to drive a change to create a broader pool of more junior candidates, with senior female lawyers, investment professionals, advisors, and members of management teams  volunteering their time to speak to groups of junior women to encourage them into the talent pool.

And so it was on Thursday night that we introduced the inaugural ‘Changemaker of the Year to the Rainmaker Awards’. Fittingly, Vic presented the award and used it as a platform to launch ‘The 6% Club’.

Her speech, and the subsequent award presented to the first Changemaker of the Year, to Beth Houghton from Palatine Private Equity – who, rather aptly, was also the first female Rainmaker of the Year nominee at this years’ Awards – drew two of the largest cheers of the night!

Hopefully the energy of those cheers, and the momentum created by both having such an award in the first place and the launch of The 6% Club, far outlast Thursday night and we are feeling the effects for many, many years to come – making the opportunities to succeed within a corporate finance community that is the envy of our neighbours nationally and internationally, open to all.

As importantly – given the regard in which our community is held in the region – there is a real opportunity that every positive change in the behaviour and attitudes of those with central roles within it, that those changes to be amplified massively through a ripple effect within the wider employment markets.

To that end I’m hopeful that Thursday evening marked an important step along the way in an incredibly valuable journey.

Gareth Davies is an Operating Director within Michael Page’s North West team and leads the professional services practice with a team recruiting roles in Finance, Legal and Human Resources

If you’d like to find out more about how you can participate in The 6% Club please get in touch via email tosixpercentclub@page.com.

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