It was April of this year, three hours into a grilling of the CEOs of seven of the largest U.S. banks before the House Financial Services Committee. The hearing was to focus on the accountability of the banks, 10 years after the financial crisis.
Even as diversity initiatives and the #MeToo movement work to recalibrate corporate power dynamics across a range of industries and workplaces, Wall Street has remained terra incognita for women trying to reach the highest rung. “In theory, this is an analytical business, and what should matter here is performance. And yet in the most analytical of industries it hasn’t mattered,” says Sallie Krawcheck, cofounder and CEO of Ellevest and once one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street.
Erin Callan resigned as CFO in June 2008 after Lehman posted a $2.8 billion quarterly loss; the firm filed for bankruptcy three months later.Sallie Krawcheck seemed destined to ascend to CEO as well. But the financial crisis wiped out a wide swath of executives, leaving the field “whiter, maler, and middle-age-er,” in Krawcheck’s words.A 2018 IMF study identified the benefits of female leadership of banks worldwide, at least at the board level.
“I think we’ve been okay at bringing women and minorities into the firm,” Citi CEO Michael Corbat said at aevent in June. But “as fast as you can bring in these talented people, you’re losing them,” he said. JPMorgan stands out with three women, from left—consumer lending CEO Marianne Lake, CFO Jennifer Piepszak, and asset and Wealth Management CEO Mary Erdoes.said in 2018 that Jamie Dimon will be CEO another five years, but already each of the three above have been mentioned as possible successors.
“That first promotion gap is really critical,” says Krivkovich; it shrinks the female talent pool from which leaders are plucked. But for the women who do get promoted, soon another factor starts to come into play. Women in mid-level management often exist just outside the inner circle. Their male peers, for instance, might accumulate critical information more easily. That, in turn, helps determine who gets the best accounts or assignments the next year; it’s Joe instead of Jane.
Firms tend to hire “overachieving women” who’ve “always gotten good grades and been terrific at what they do,” says a former managing director in investment banking at a Wall Street firm. As their careers progress, the laws of attrition mean things get tougher—“they get the first C in their lives”—and it comes “right at the time when they’ve established a partnership or married a spouse and maybe had a child,” she says. “The cost of being [at work] is going up.
Source: Financial Digest (financialdigest.net)
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