THERE ARE no black executives in any of the top three roles in the UK’s 100 biggest companies for the first time in six years, a report on boardroom diversity shows.

The research comes from the executive recruitment and diversity consultancy agency Green Park and reveals that the number of black leaders working within FTSE 100 firms has not made any progressive since 2014.

Two black executives toppled out of the running which caused figures to decline to zero.

They include the cruise operator Carnival, which is run by a black chief executive, Arnold Donald and the South African businessman, Fred Phaswana, who retired as the joint chair of the packaging and paper group Mondi.

People from other ethnic minority backgrounds who are in positions such as chair, chief executive or chief financial officer has increased by a small amount over the summer period, however, the absence of black executives means that only 10 out of 297 leaders in these top three positions come from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Black representation at the top of British businesses also seems unlikely to advance in the near future. The number of people in leadership positions has decreased from 1.4% to 0.9%.

In response to the figures, Trevor Phillips, the chair of Green Park and the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “We know there is no shortage of qualified candidates to fill these roles if companies are willing to look. Yet the snowy peaks of British business remain stubbornly white.”

Mr Phillips also called on shareholders, consumers and employees to “start questioning whether black lives matter is just rhetoric rather than reality. Corporate leaders need to stop telling us how much they care and do something to show us that black lives really do matter.”