Women-Founded and Led Businesses Are Creating Superior Returns for Investors

The year 1986 was filled with some memorable moments.

The Oprah Winfrey Show debuted nationally in September of 1986.
Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” and Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” were rocking the music charts.
Strong women personas were featured on hit TV shows like Dynasty ,Falcon Crest, Cagney and Lacey, and Murder, She Wrote.
Unfortunately, 1986 was also the year where the “glass ceiling” was introduced and highlighted to mainstream America. As you most likely already know, the Glass ceiling is a metaphor that highlights the forces and issues that prevent female professionals from reaching senior management positions.

Fast forward 35 years, and as we sit here in 2021, women still struggle with in-equality when it comes to females in senior executive leadership roles.

I guess we called ourselves “progressive,” and as long as it doesn’t pertain to women in business, we can use that term. Yet the DATA has shown that women-led businesses have, on average, yielded a higher return than their male counterparts. In a cited study by Finland’s Nordea Bank AB, “Between 2009 and 2016, publicly listed companies that had women as CEOs or heads of the board, had a 25 percent annualized return, compared to 11 percent for the MSCI World Index.”

It was also cited that Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest assets managers with over $4.9 trillion in assets under management, performed its own research and found similar results.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Fidelity Investments announced the launch of the Fidelity Women’s Leadership Fund. “The global equity strategy will invest in both growth and value stocks and focus on finding companies that include a woman as a member of the senior management team, are governed by a board for which women represent at least one-third of all directors, or in Fidelity’s opinion, have adopted policies designed to attract, retain and promote women.”

Independently,S&P Global issued a report detailing a 24-month study they conducted. “Firms with female CEOs and CFOs have produced superior stock price performance, compared to the market average. In the 24 months post-appointment, female CEOs saw a 20% increase in stock price momentum, and female CFOs saw a 6% increase in profitability and 8% larger stock returns. These results are economically and statistically significant.”

The data and surveys speak for themselves.

This is NOT a statistical anomaly. It is a direct correlation that proves women are great business leaders. Investors are finally starting to wake up to these facts

Did we mention Greenfield Groves is female-owned and led?