📈IPO📉Watch🔎: January numbers … not comin’ in hot

So the year is not off to an awesome start as far as gender diversity on public boards is concerned (and yes, in other ways, too, but we’ll leave that be for now).

Just 19 percent of board seats at companies that went public in January were held by women and just 25 percent of the named executives at these companies were female. Note that Boss Betty’s analysis only includes U.S.-based companies and does not include special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).

Only one of the six companies that IPOed in January had a female CEO, Annovis Bio’s Maria Maccecchini. Annovis also had the highest percentage of female board members at 40 percent. Usually (though certainly not always), bigger companies post higher rates of diversity at the board and executive levels. With its low market cap of $38.3 million, it’s surprising that Annovis has the most gender diversity on its board, though it’s very likely that the company’s female CEO has something to do with that.

On the shame list for January are Arcutis Biotherapeutics and Black Diamond Therapeutics, both of which went public with zero female board members. Notably, Goldman Sachs underwrote Arcutis’s IPO, which happened just about a week after Goldman CEO David Solomon announced that the bank would not “take a company public unless there’s at least one diverse board candidate, with a focus on women.” Apparently the new policy does not go into effect until July.