The 2025 Parker Review update, “Improving the Ethnic Diversity of UK Business”, examines how far major UK companies have progressed on ethnic minority representation on boards and in senior management, ten years after the Review began. There has been significant progress made in the FTSE 250 over the last year, with 204 of the 236 companies which reported having at least one ethnic director compared to 175 last year — a rise of 17%. This represents 82% of all FTSE 250 companies. The level of ethnic diversity in the Boards of FTSE 100 companies remains higher than those in the FTSE 250 with 95 of the FTSE 100 companies having at least one ethnic minority director as at December 2024.
Black Talent Charter Opinion
The 2025 Parker Review update, “Improving the Ethnic Diversity of UK Business”, examines how far major UK companies have progressed on ethnic minority representation on boards and in senior management, ten years after the Review began. There has been significant progress made in the FTSE 250 over the last year, with 204 of the 236 companies which reported having at least one ethnic director compared to 175 last year — a rise of 17%. This represents 82% of all FTSE 250 companies. The level of ethnic diversity in the Boards of FTSE 100 companies remains higher than those in the FTSE 250 with 95 of the FTSE 100 companies having at least one ethnic minority director as at December 2024.
Overall, the report shows that black professionals remain significantly under‑represented compared with both the wider UK population and other minority groups. They have examined the 2021 UK Census data for England and Wales of those aged between 30 and 69 which would be the typical ages of the director and senior management population. For this age group, Asian people comprise approximately 9.2% of the population and Black people make up approximately 3.9%. Mixed ethnicity people comprise 1.7% of the population while other ethnic groups make up 2.2%.
Within the FTSE 100, the report identifies a total of 25 Black directors, compared with 121 Asian directors, out of all board positions. This means that black professionals account for only a small single‑digit percentage of FTSE 100 directorships, whereas Asian directors make up a much larger share of the ethnic minority cohort.
The Review reports that the combined ethnic minority presence on FTSE 250 boards has risen, but numbers of black directors remain low compared with Asian and other non‑Black minority peers. When contrasting the FTSE 250 Boards figures with UK demographic data, there has been good progress. For example, in the last year in FTSE 250 Boards with the number of black directorships rose to 44 from 31 the previous year. However, the share of black directors is still only 2.5% in comparison to their 3.9% share of population. Directors from other ethnic minorities held 12.9% of Board seats in the FSTE 250 — close to their 13.1% share of the population. Although the exact split varies by company, the data show that a relatively small pool of black individuals holds board roles across the index, reinforcing the concern that the benefits of overall ethnic diversity progress are not evenly distributed. The report stresses that counting “any ethnic minority” director can therefore conceal the continuing scarcity of black decision‑makers at this level.
In senior management – typically executive committee and direct reports – the under‑representation of black professionals becomes more pronounced. The Review’s breakdown indicates that Black executives occupy only a small fraction of senior roles across the FTSE 350, with numbers notably lower than for Asian colleagues, even where the overall ethnic minority percentage in senior management has improved. This imbalance suggests that Black professionals are less likely to move through internal pipelines into ExCo and ExCo‑1 roles than other minority groups, despite a decade of focus on ethnic diversity.
On the basis of these figures, the 2025 report draws a sharp distinction between aggregate ethnic minority progress and the specific trajectory for black professionals. It warns that companies can meet the headline target of having at least one ethnic minority director while still having no, or very few, black individuals in either board or senior executive positions. To address this, the Review calls for more granular reporting that separates out black representation, targeted development and succession planning for black talent, and explicit attention to this gap in board evaluation and search processes. Only by doing so, it argues, can UK businesses ensure that black professionals progress at rates comparable to both white and other non‑Black minority peers, rather than remaining persistently under‑represented in the country’s most powerful corporate roles
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