Heads That Roll in the Finance Industry Mess Are Female: Standard & Poor Sued for Discriminating Against Women in Leadership
Mar 23rd, 2009 by admin
So, the heads that roll in the financial institutions mess are turning out to be — what else? — female heads.
Rosario Buendia, a former managing director in Standard & Poor’s structured-finance ratings group, says in a lawsuit filed earlier this month that McGraw-Hill Cos. discriminated against women in reorganizing the bond-rating subsidiary’s leadership. Buendia says she was unlawfully terminated on Aug. 11 from her job overseeing S&P’s global business of rating asset-backed securities, which are investment pools of home mortgages, equity lines and credit card debt. Buendia and two other female executives lost their jobs in the structured-finance unit that day, along with a male executive who subsequently was rehired, the lawsuit states.
According to this article. female executives who have been replaced include former company President Kathleen Corbet and at least three other female managing directors in S&P’s structured-finance business whose phone numbers have been disconnected. A switchboard operator confirmed the women were no longer listed.
According to the lawsuit, female executives who once led S&P’s ratings business were also paid less than men for the same work, with median annual compensation for the best-paid women at 30 percent less than the $797,774 for men.
Women managers are losing jobs disproportionately throughout the financial services industry, according to an attorney cited in the article who is litigating gender-based claims against New York-based Citigroup Inc. and a U.S. unit of Tokyo-based Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Ltd. Whereas women formerly held about 10 percent of the managerial jobs in Citigroup’s public finance business, for example, they have comprised approximately 45 percent of the unit’s job cuts since November.
One thing that is distinctly NOT helpful is that — surprise, surprise — neither S&P nor Citigroup maintains records as to the sex of those who have been fired or replaced. We have to somehow figure that out for ourselves if we can get past all the attorneys’ “no comments.”
Heart
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