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Wall Street is usually not accused of doing too much to women and minority groups. After all, the financial services industry is where more major banks are named after the Morgan family than are led by women's chief executives.
So when the biggest names in finance have said over and over again that they put their efforts into lending, hiring, hiring, promotion and cooperation, it's the past six months. It meant something between.
And so many of those much promoted policies and practices are scrubbed to keep them from getting caught up in the crosses of the Trump administration's campaign on diversity, equity and inclusion, so that's what it is now It means something else.
The retreat includes white-collar investment banks, consultants, mutual funds and stock exchanges. The latest one was Goldman Sachs. On Tuesday, he said he would drop a quota that would force the board to include women and minority groups to include members. Others on Wall Street have cut back on efforts to recruit black and Latino employees.
One international bank, BNP Paribas, has put the brakes on programming for a new event for next month's International Women's Day.
The pullback was less obvious than, for example, the technology industry, which has made public support for President Trump's anti-diversity initiatives. Also, some financial companies were beginning to make changes long before the election. For example, we have launched a program aimed at minority candidates for all.
However, the updated push reflects the acceptance among financial elites that advocating diversity is beneficial, even if once a good business sense was to advocate for diversity.
“The speed at which everyone is giving up this job and escapes this space is pretty amazing,” said Seth Welty, a former investment bank diversity recruiter.
At City, employees pepper Mark Mason, the bank's chief financial officer and one of the industry's most senior black executives, asking questions about whether the bank will stick to DEI's promises. It's there. Two employees and transcripts reviewed by the New York Times.
Mason told staff there was little specific answer. “The strategies and programs we have may have to evolve, but our core values have not changed, and that's the first point,” he said.
“The second point is probably also obvious. You have to follow the law, right?”
Last week, the bank had offered 93 courses to train employees internally described as diversity-related in the bank. One City employee is asking that the person be not identified as they are not allowed to speak publicly. It includes training in combating 13 “unconscious bias,” or the idea that employees could mislead others, the employee said.
Asked about the offering, City said the count was inaccurate. A spokeswoman excludes courses such as courses that are repeated in multiple languages, and if the bank is determined to be diversity after an inquiry from the era, then the total is the total if the bank is determined to be related to diversity. said it is 10 in the US. Some should be classified as “harassment,” with only one focusing on unconscious bias, the spokeswoman said.
“We continue to actively consider the executive orders to understand the necessary impacts on our business and to make necessary changes,” she wrote in an emailed statement.
A fierce debate
Investors were fiercely preparing for Trump's inauguration.
He rewards their hopes in several ways by dedating only one consumer financial protection bureau, but put it on the DEI defense. The president signed a cleaning order rolling back government's DEI efforts, saying last week the Department of Justice would direct the Civil Rights Division to investigate and punish private sector DEI activities.
Late last month, 11 Republican state attorney generals said they were working to hire, promote, promote and select BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, City and Morgan Stanley. He was faced with numerous accusations, including illegally using racial preferences.
“I have political purposes,” the Attorney General wrote, “I have influenced your decision-making at the expense of your statutory and contractual obligations.”
Within these companies, threats are causing alarms.
Take Goldman, who choked up the typical DEI records of many big companies during his six-year tenure of CEO David M. Solomon.
He promises to promote more female partners, employing at least two if the percentage of black executives is low (3.8% in 2023), if the bank is low or the bank is low, and It has indicated that rules have been established requiring appointments. Goldman's “diverse” board members will help submit their first public offering.
“In the long run, I think this is the best advice for businesses,” Solomon said in 2020 that he was frequently declared on Wall Street.
But soon after Trump's election, Goldman leaders realized they were putting his anger at risk, and three executives involved in the debate, sparking enthusiastic internal debate at the bank. said. That's less because Solomon changed his mind about merit – he said two people who spoke to him about it – but by leaving it in place, the bank said, “They're not going to be able to get the bank to go to Trump and the activists, I said this because it could become a target for people.
Starting in January, the bank will first bending the rules, allowing two clients to submit public publications without meeting board requirements. said one of the people. Still, some of the Goldmans inside continued to encourage chief executives to either maintain the course or halt policy implementation without making formal changes.
On Tuesday, Goldman officially concluded the program along with bank spokesman Tony Flatt, citing “legal development.”
“We continue to believe that successful boards will benefit from a diverse background and perspective, and we encourage you to take this approach,” Flat said in a statement.
New rules
The financial world is different from retailers such as Costco, where customers can quickly choose to shop elsewhere. For example, many conservative activists and social media influencers who have successfully persuaded the supply of tractors to abandon its DEI program are entitled to shareholder votes on alleged abuse of political and religious depositors of shareholders. It was pulled back over the years in an attempt to force it. Major banks.
Now they get a lot of what they want without even voting.
The day after Trump's inauguration, NASDAQ discloses board-level diversity statistics for stock exchange-listed companies and provides explanations if they do not have sufficient female or minority representatives. I pulled the rules.
A few days later, Vanguard, the asset manager who owns some of almost every large public company on the planet, will no longer seek boards to ensure “gender, race and ethnic diversity.” He said.
A Vanguard spokesman said the change reflects “an evolving regulatory environment across the local market.” He said in a statement: “We continue to believe that diversity of the board along multiple dimensions, including skills, experience, perspectives and personal traits, brings cognitive diversity.”
Some are stuck with their plans. Christian Sewing, CEO of Deutsche Bank, said on January 30 that he was “strickenly delaying” the bank's DEI program, and his counterpart at Swiss Bank's UBS was similar. I typed a note.
Several major banks, including JPMorgan, the country's largest lender, continue to run huge investment funds that say are trained to close the racial wealth gap. JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon was asked by CNBC after Trump's inauguration about the pressure from conservative activists. However, he immediately added, “I don't mean that I'm not going to change my policy any further.”
Shifts will be faster at BNP Paribas, based in Paris. For at least a decade, the BNP has addressed the causes of gender parity in banking, a historically male-dominated industry. The BNP internally requires that the four-person meetings include at least one woman, and for a long time to commemorate International Women's Day in March, its CEO will be UN for gender promoted being named “Heforshe” champion. Parity initiative.
However, last week, the bank ordered plans to halt plans to expand the women-focused festival next month at IT sponsored tennis tournaments, including revoking their invitations to speakers. According to someone who was described as a plan that was not allowed to speak publicly, the bank told some staff it was a disgusting thing to draw more attention to the efforts.
BNP spokesman Michelle Sprod confirmed his decision not to expand the program or others in other sports. She cited planning and resource limitations. “I'll do that next year,” she said.
Maureen Farrell contributed the report.
