Leading British companies are rewriting their yearly surveys in the wake of Donald Trump’s corporate crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion
Five years after the murder of George Floyd sparked the Black Lives Matter protests and a rush among corporates to champion diversity, analysis of annual reports by The Observer reveals a sharp decline in mentions of the terms “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) by a majority of FTSE 100 companies.
Total mentions of DEI, along with the number of pages containing the phrase and variations on it, both declined by more than 16% on average when comparing the annual reports for 85 companies in 2023 and 2024. Meanwhile, the total mentions of environmental, social and governance (ESG) and variations on the term declined 22%.
The data suggests that a large orange cloud has blown across the Atlantic and now looms over the boardrooms of Britain. Since reclaiming the office of president, Donald Trump has sought to expunge mention of these two abbreviations from federal documents and has threatened to take legal action against companies that fail to do the same. His administration is in the process of blowing $2m on an investigation into whether DEI policies cause plane crashes.
Although attention paid to DEI and ESG in UK company reports since the global anti-racism protests of summer 2020 has increased overall, the recent scraping of 2023 and 2024 reports – which came before Trump began his second term – shows a backslide. Anecdotally, the erasing of DEI and ESG from corporate websites, reports and internal communications in 2025 appears to have accelerated.
“Many organisations made public declarations of support in the days following the murder of George Floyd – very few have made any meaningful change,” said Pavita Cooper, UK chair of the 30% Club, a global campaign to increase gender diversity at board and senior management levels. “It’s disappointing that organisations have failed to honour the public proclamations of support.”
The methodology used to collect the data looked for instances where any combination of DEI, DE&I, or the terms “diversity” “inclusion” “equity” “equality” and “fairness” were used in conjunction. Four firms in the FTSE 100 that used the term DEI liberally in 2023 have cut mentions of it.
Communications company WPP gives small sections of its 2024 annual report to “gender”, “ethnic” and “board” diversity, but has removed all mentions of the term in conjunction with “equity” and “inclusion”. A spokesperson referred The Observer to the statement of WPP chief Mark Read, which said: “With political events, much has changed over the last year. Some things, though, have not changed. At WPP our aim has always been to foster a culture of respect for one another in which everyone feels they belong.”
‘Organisations that drop references to ESG risk disengaging future talent’
Pavita Cooper, 30% Club
Medical tech maker Smith+Nephew and the InterContinental Hotels Group – both companies with business units in the US – made two and one reference respectively of DEI in 2024, down from at least eight and 28 the previous year. Both companies’ annual reports did however mention diversity in different contexts.
Pershing Square Holdings, an investment fund managed by Trump supporter Bill Ackman, reduced its mentions of DEI from one to zero. None of the companies responded to requests for comment at short notice.
By contrast, some businesses have doubled down on the use of DEI as a term. Rightmove, Admiral Group and gold producer Endeavour Mining all increased mentions last year.
The decline of the use of ESG is steeper. The percentage of annual report pages that mentioned the term declined from 12% to 8.9% on average between 2022 and 2024. Roxhill Media said in its analysis of the state of ESG in 2025 that pronouncements about “purpose” have given way to “pragmatism”. But the increasing obsolescence of the term should not be read necessarily as a lack of action. Roxhill found a 22% rise in climate/carbon mentions and a 62% increase in net zero references.
The Observer’s analysis showed that some hard-to-transition industries were actively embracing the term ESG in 2024. More than 6% of pages in Shell’s 2024 annual report reference ESG, up from less than 2% in 2023. Similarly, 28% of pages in mining company Rio Tinto’s 2024 report mention ESG, against 16% in 2022.
Of course, actions speak louder than words, but given the rise of net zero revanchism politically, it is interesting to see that UK companies may not completely agree.
Cooper said: “Organisations that have chosen to drop references to ESG in the annual reports risk disengaging their future talent pipeline; gen Z will overtake millennials in the workforce by 2034, meaning companies can’t afford to drag their feet when it comes to ESG transparency.”
Photograph by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
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