CS Credit Suisse Group

By Margot Patrick 

LONDON -- U.S. investment banks in London have some of the biggest gender pay gaps in the country, reflecting long-established cultures of men dominating top trading and advisory roles and women working in junior posts or as administrators.

Women are paid around half as much as men in the main U.K. investment banking units of Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley, marking the widest gaps among around 40 global financial companies that have reported pay data to the U.K. government.

In one small JPMorgan unit that included senior merger-and-acquisition bankers on the snapshot day for the pay data, April 5, 2017, women were paid 54% less, and women's bonuses were 89% less than those paid to men. The pay gap across JPMorgan's 16,000 U.K. employees was 36%, as measured by median hourly pay, and 47% in its largest investment banking unit.

Bank of America's investment banking units paid women 47% less, while the gap across all of its 6,000 U.K. employees was 31%. Part of the issue: Women hold 98% of the bank's lower-paid administrative posts, it said.

The picture at Morgan Stanley was similar, with the unit housing investment bankers and traders paying women 46% less, for an overall 35% median gap across its U.K. workforce.

Getting more women into companies and boardrooms has been a hot topic for years but the issue is boiling over in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination across industries. Some money managers have said they won't invest in companies that don't have women on their boards -- -even as they work to improve their own internal gender mixes.

All three banks pledged to improve the figures by supporting and encouraging women to climb their way to senior positions, and by welcoming back women who leave the workforce to have children. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which earlier this month said it pays women 36% less in its main London unit, has also put gender parity on its agenda, recently signing a British government charter to set targets and tie senior manager pay to the outcomes.

Citigroup Inc. on Tuesday reported an overall pay gap in the U.K. of 30% and a 36% gap in its main investment banking and markets arm. The lender's Europe chief executive, Jim Cowles, in a memo to staff said the bank aims to have a 30% female representation in higher-level roles in the Europe, Middle East and Africa division by 2025, and is in the process of setting global targets.

Data for the group of around 40 financial companies were compiled by The Wall Street Journal from filings to a government website. Most firms had to make separate filings for several divisions, sometimes skewing the figures. A JPMorgan spokeswoman said the unit with the starkest figures represented just 3.5% of its U.K. staff and has shrunk because of a streamlining of its legal entities in the country.

The U.K. introduced the reporting requirement to put the spotlight on companies with big pay and role imbalances. Any company with more than 250 employees in the country must report before an April 4 deadline and around 9,000 filings are expected.

The figures measure median hourly pay by gender and don't indicate men and women are paid different rates for the same job, which is illegal in many countries including the U.K. and the U.S.

"The root cause for what we see here is really the high proportion of men in senior and high-paying roles," said Peter Goerke, head of human resources at Credit Suisse Group AG. The Swiss bank on Tuesday said it pays women 29% less in median hourly pay across its U.K. operations, and 45% less in a unit covering global markets, investment banking and capital markets.

He said making significant improvements will mean stretching the comfort zones of senior managers and headhunters, including sometimes asking headhunters for all-woman candidate lists and steering interview processes to get more women to join and rise through its ranks.

The bank won't discriminate, either negatively or positively, Mr. Goerke said, but if three of 10 candidates are female, "maybe you interview all three of the women and three of the men...to steer it a little bit."

At the end of 2017, just 14% of Credit Suisse's managing directors were women, Mr. Goerke said. The aspiration is for around 18% by 2021.

Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 27, 2018 11:14 ET (15:14 GMT)

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