Citigroup Shatters a Glass Ceiling

The American financial industry has been run by men since the late 1700s.

And on Sept. 10, 2020, more than two centuries later, Jane Fraser was named the first female chief executive officer of a major U.S. bank.

Fraser’s ascent seemed to happen overnight, but her career was decades in the making. After stints at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, she joined Citigroup in 2004. She ran the Latin America business -- a unit that accounted for less than 15% of the bank’s revenue -- before she was tapped as president in late 2019. Now, she’s the next CEO. Here’s a profile of her.

At Citigroup, they call it “the ugly truth,” she told me this summer. It’s that women are paid 73% less than the median salary of men, and “that’s even more true in our Black population,” she said. There’s a grand hope that her appointment will force change across the industry. (Watch her full interview here -- as she has some pretty progressive views about inclusive finance.)

Deloitte last year found that out of more than 100 CEOs of publicly traded financial institutions in America, all but six were men. And at the top six banks, less than 30% of the senior leadership is female. Many of those women aren’t in operational roles, making them less likely to be CEO candidates.

Read more from my colleagues here about what women across the industry are saying about Fraser’s appointment.

More for Women

For all the talk of improving diversity in the governance of IPO candidates, portfolio companies of private equity firms and so on, there are some places with real lags in progress.

Take the SPAC market, for example. Of about 160 blank-check companies that have gone public since 2019, only one has had a female CEO, according to an analysis by investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners. That means big money this year has gone to an area with almost no women at all.

So Perella is seeking to raise $200 million to start its own SPAC, run by its co-head of consumer and retail, Stacia Schlosser Ryan, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, rival investment bank Houlihan Lokey started a business and hired Wall Street veteran Alexandra Lebenthal to run it. Lebenthal rose through the finance industry when it was still common practice for men to entertain clients at strip clubs. At a 2004 panel hosted by Deutsche Bank AG she denounced that type of behavior and said, “Men are still threatened by us.”

She’ll be running an initiative focusing on businesses owned or led by women out of Houlihan Lokey’s financial-sponsors group. Lebenthal speaks with Bloomberg Television about her goals.

Girls Who Invest, the non-profit firm founded by former New York City pensions chief investment officer Seema Hingorani, this week named a new CEO. Katherine Jollon Colsher, who was the national director of Goldman’s 10,000 Small Businesses, joined us at Bloomberg Television to speak about the goal of getting 30% of the world’s investable capital overseen by women within a decade.

There’s more to come, but this is my call to gather stories from interesting women and men -- especially those of color -- across all of finance. We’re all just looking for a little inspiration, after all. Tips and ideas are always welcome at [email protected].