ESG: What kind of people are being nominated as company directors?: 46.5% of new outside director candidates at Nikkei 225 companies are women

Research evidence excerpt

ESG: What kind of people are being nominated as company directors?: 46.5% of new outside director candidates at Nikkei 225 companies are women

ESG: What kind of people are being nominated as Global Markets Research

company directors? 19 June 2026

EQUITY: JAPAN ESG

46.5% of new outside director candidates at Research Analysts

Nikkei 225 companies are women Japan ESG research Kazuya Nakagawa - NSC

Focus on nomination of non-Japanese people, people with capital market kazuya.nakagawa@nomura.com

insight, and female inside directors +81 3 6703 1184

Sahoko Goshima - NSC

Getting close to 50:50 male/female split in new director appointments at Nikkei 225 sahoko.goshima@nomura.com

constituents +81 3 6703 1740

Next week will mark the peak of June AGMs at Japanese companies, and many

companies will be making new director appointments. We looked at the nominations for

new outside directors and female inside directors based on the convocation notices for

June 2026 AGMs at the 180 Nikkei 225 constituents with March yearends.

Of these 180 companies, 122 (67.8%) are proposing new outside director appointments at

AGMs, with 202 candidates. Of these 202 candidates, 94 (46.5%) are women, which

means that women account for nearly half of new outside director candidates at Nikkei

225 companies. The fact that there is close to a 50:50 split between men and women in

terms of new outside director nominations in the Nikkei 225, which represents Japan's

biggest companies, can be seen as evidence of proactive moves to hire women directors.

Focus also on non-Japanese candidates and candidates with capital market insight,

female inside directors

In our 14 November 2025 report ESG:Boarddiversityandcorporatevalue, we noted that