The best paying jobs in finance barely go to women
Some of the best paying jobs at the best paying financial services firms in London, barely go to women.
Newly released gender pay gap figures in the UK reveal that hedge fund Millennium and electronic trading firm Jane Street - both of which are known for being some of the highest payers in the industry, barely have any women in top roles.
Firms with more than 250 employees are compelled to file gender pay figures with the British goverment.
These figures reveal that women occupy only 7.8% of the highest paid jobs at Jane Street, although some of their alumni are world renowned. Caroline Ellison, for one - the CEO of now-defunct crypto trading firm Alameda Research and protégé of Sam Bankman-Fried (himself an ex-Jane Street trader). So is Ella Ehrlich, a senior developer (and gamer) at the firm. The pay is spectacular though, with London pay falling to £667k ($831k) per head in 2021.
Millennium’s entry is slightly more complicated. Millennium Capital Management (a company) boasts women in 13.9% of its highest paid jobs, but Millennium Capital Partners (a partnership, with the highest paid portfolio managers) has just 8.3%. It’s unclear *exactly* how many employees are at each, but the averages aren’t looking good. Millennium pays pretty well too - £903k ($1.1m) per head in London.
It’s worth noting, however, that despite poor representation at the top, women at Jane Street and Millennium are reasonably compensated in relation to other places. The mean pay gap at both is less than 28% - although, notably, the bonus gap is colossal. In their defense, it’s awful everywhere.
Investment banks aren’t impressing anyone either. Women make up 12.8% of Morgan Stanley’s highest paid employees; they make up 14.2% at JPMorgan Securities, and 15% at Citi Global Markets. A relative light (seriously, relative) was Goldman Sachs, where women make up 23% of highest-paid positions.
By comparison, working in private equity for Blackstone looks like a pretty good bet for women (35%). JPMorgan’s asset managers are much more equally distributed than its investment bank – 21.7% of highest paid jobs are held by women there, the same as at Goldman’s asset management division.
The top paying boutiques are a slight standout (we can’t emphasize “slight” enough – even 30% is far away from an ideal). Evercore, which also pays spectacularly, has 20% of high-paying jobs going to women. Lazard managed to hit 26%. It also pays well, funnily enough.
Women are also a minority of the lowest-paid employees at Millennium and Jane Street. However, women make up anywhere from 53% of lowest paid jobs (at Morgan Stanley) to 65% (at Goldman Sachs).
Data for Man Group was not on the Gender Pay Gap Service website and was taken from public disclosures.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: Zeno.Toulon@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
