By Sonali Basak and Sabrina Willmer
(Bloomberg) --Sallie Krawcheck, who runs an investing platform focused on women, sparked a debate among hundreds of readers on LinkedIn with an observation that Morgan Stanley’s newly appointed managing directors were almost all male.
Krawcheck posted a photo showing 46 names of financial advisers in the firm’s wealth management division with the comment, “Feels like something is missing from this list of new Managing Directors ... what could it be?”
Only three of the people were women.
Readers have posted about 500 comments reflecting a wide range of opinions. Some expressed disappointment with how few women were promoted to a higher rank, despite their ability to pull in millions of assets as financial advisers; others said Krawcheck’s post was paranoid or her analysis was incomplete. One reader pointed out that the list of managing directors across the bank had more women listed than the wealth management list implied.
Krawcheck, who competed with Morgan Stanley when she ran the wealth management arm of Bank of America Corp., now runs Ellevest, a female-focused online investing platform. She also previously was head of global wealth management at Citigroup Inc.
She’s long sought to spotlight the lack of women in senior roles on Wall Street and across the broader financial industry. It causes bigger problems, undermining diversity of thought and increasing risks, even on a systemic level, she wrote in an op-ed to the New York Times in December.
Firm’s Practices
Promotions for financial advisers at Morgan Stanley are based on revenue over a period of three years, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.The wealth management division elevated more women than the just the advisers. About 40 percent of employees promoted in the overall group, which includes operations and legal staff, were women, said spokeswoman Christine Jockle.
The debate on Krawcheck’s post may be a preview of what’s to come as Morgan Stanley, along with other big global banks, are preparing to disclose the difference between compensation for their U.K.-based male and female employees. The U.K. government is requiring companies with 250 or more employees to report the gap between what men and women make on average, a measure that often reflects the fact that men earn more because they’re over-represented in higher-paying roles.
For example, Barclays Plc filed its required disclosures last week, becoming the first big global bank to do so. It revealed that women earn on average 48 percent less than men do, a figure that partly reflects the fact that less than one-third of its senior managers are women, according to company figures.
Attached Media
--With assistance from David Scheer.To contact the reporters on this story: Sonali Basak in New York at [email protected] ;Sabrina Willmer in Boston at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at [email protected] Janet Paskin, Heather Perlberg
