It’s not exactly surprising that a major Wall Street bank would have few women among its top executives. There has never been a female CEO of a large American bank, after all, and gender bias is still operative in many corners of the financial services industry.
But Citigroup took the boys-club mentality to an entirely different level with new CEO Michael Corbat’s new management reshuffle, which left exactly zero women among the bank’s top-level executives.
American Banker reports that with the reshuffle, Citigroup now has no female executives among the thirteen people who report directly to Corbat, and just one woman on the firm’s 24-member operating committee. (The bank does a little better on its board, which has three women out of twelve members.) This despite the fact that female investors have been shown to outperform men by at least one recent study.
But fear not, ambitious women of Citigroup. The bank swears that the newly installed glass ceiling will be breakable soon:
“While our CEO’s limited number of direct reports does not reflect the diversity of our company leadership, we anticipate this will change over time due to our deep pool of talent,” Citi spokeswoman Bell said on Thursday in an email reply to questions.
Let’s hope they get on that soon. It’s starting to look like a White House advisory meeting over there.
