INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
LONDON: Generous salary and juicy bonus Check
Client meetings at private members’ club Check
Swanky Mayfair office Check
Company maternity scheme Maybe, we’ll get back to you.
In the competition for talent, the hedge fund industry still has an edge over many
other areas of finance, except, it would seem, when it comes to employing women.
Women are in the minority across the financial industry
when it comes to top jobs
A Reuters analysis of regulatory filings shows the proportion is especially low among British hedge funds, most of which are private and not
bound by disclosure rules.
Just seven women were hired or promoted last year as investment executives at 20 of Britain’s top private hedge
funds, the lowest level in at least a decade, the analysis found
They took on 82 men in that period.
Of all the places to work in hedge funds, the investment team is the most coveted
Portfolio managers or traders decide where to invest client money and are traditionally the highest-paid members of staff
Such roles are a launch pad for star managers to set up their own firms in the future, establishing the next generation of hedge funds.
In
Britain, these roles are registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under a category known as the ‘CF 30’ function, which
also comprises senior marketing jobs.
A Reuters analysis of CF 30 filings for 76 financial firms showed hedge funds registered women at a
fraction of the rate of other finance companies.
Hedge funds say they struggle to find women to work as portfolio managers and point out
that women are better represented in other areas, including compliance and legal counsel
These are middle-office or back-office positions, rarely involved in investment calls.
People who work for or in financial services say more
female candidates would emerge for trading positions if hedge funds cast the net wider for potential candidates, and offered better
maternity packages and mentorships.
“Hedge funds will all say they don’t get female applicants but are they even looking for them Do
they care The data suggests no they don’t,” said Yasmine Chinwala of think tank New Financial.
Unlike the rest of the financial sector,
where large, listed companies are now required to disclose pay gaps between men and women, and are under public pressure to have more women
in senior roles, hedge funds can mostly operate below the radar.
Usually privately-owned and run by their founders, they are not the target
of government drives to improve female representation in finance.
“Public scrutiny, and more specifically, mandated government-backed
scrutiny … delivers results,” said Chinwala
“These sectors have shown they are not going to make significant changes themselves without a big, concerted, external push.”
Investing
by numbersThree of the 20 top British hedge funds covered in the Reuters analysis commented about their record of hiring women.
“We have
women represented across all functional areas of the firm as well as in senior management positions which are not covered by CF 30
registrations, which represents a small proportion of our staff,” a spokeswoman for Marshall Wace said.
The firm has registered three
women in the CF 30 category since 2009 compared with 40 men over the same period.
“Algebris continues to invest in women’s careers,
developing talent and creating the next generation of female leaders in finance,” said a spokesman for the firm, which registered nine
women and 24 men as a CF 30 since 2009.
Emso Asset Management said 35 per cent of its employees were women and said it paid employees for
the first 26 weeks of their 52 week maternity leave
It has registered nine women and 30 men as a CF 30 since 2009.
“Our diversity in employee base reflects the diversity of markets within
which we make investments,” Chief Operating Officer Rory McGregor said in an emailed statement.
Emso was the only one of the 20 hedge
funds to comment publicly on its maternity pay.
Paid leave after becoming a parent can vary widely between firms
One portfolio manager told Reuters she had to argue her case to get paid while on maternity leave
She declined to be named for fear of damaging her career.
Valerie Kosenko, at recruitment consultant Mondrian Alpha, said maternity pay was
an important consideration for a lot of women looking to work in the hedge fund industry.
“I don’t think hedge funds gave a lot of
It’s something that hedge funds can definitely improve.”
The 10 largest US hedge funds with a UK office - including Citadel and
Millennium Management - registered slightly more women than their British counterparts, at nearly 13 per cent, in 2018, according to the
Reuters analysis.
A spokesman for Millennium declined to comment
Citadel did not respond to requests for comment.
CF 30 is an imperfect measure of diversity because firms can have a different
interpretation of the FCA guidelines as to who should be registered.
Some firms register investor relations staff as CF 30
Women tend to be well-represented in such jobs, meaning that the CF 30 category may exaggerate the actual number of women hired or promoted
to be traders.
In the decade covered by the Reuters analysis, the ratio of women employed under the CF 30 designation by 20 of the top
private British hedge funds never went above 23 per cent and averaged 16 per cent.
Why tryThere are no comparable figures on hedge funds’
portfolio manager hires in the United States, but data on US firms founded in the last few years show the industry remains dominated by men
Women-led firms managed only about 3 per cent of the assets in new funds launched between 2013 and 2017, according to figures from Hedge
Fund Intelligence.
Jane Buchan, who spent nearly 20 years allocating money as chief executive of PAAMCO, one of the world’s biggest
investors in hedge funds, says female money managers have to work harder to get investors to trust them.
“Women need to outperform
significantly in order to have the same asset levels as men who perform worse,” said Buchan, who now runs her own fund, Martlet Asset
Management.
“With this sort of outcome, which can be shown in academic studies and what many women perceive from their own interactions
with investors, why try”
Man Group, one of the few listed hedge funds, is the only UK hedge fund firm to sign up to the British
government’s Women in Finance Charter, which sets targets to increase female representation in the upper echelons of the City.
The
London-headquartered firm is targeting 25 per cent female representation in senior management roles by the end of 2020 from 22 per cent last
year and has introduced a number of measures to improve gender diversity, including a returners program for women who left the industry.
It
offers 18 weeks paid leave globally for new parents, male or female.
Man Group registered five women as a CF 30 last year, but that
represented a re-categorization to comply with European rules rather than new hires.
“We have concentrated on making sure internal people
can meet their potential, introduced a lot of mentoring, ensured that we always consider a female candidate and looked at things that have
historically slowed down hiring women,” said Man’s chief executive officer, Luke Ellis.
Women held 13 per cent of investment management
roles at Man Group globally in 2018, up from 11 per cent in 2017 and 8 per cent in 2013, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The
sleazy bitsInterviews with nine women who work or worked as portfolio managers in Britain and the United States, said hedge funds could be a
tough sector for female investment managers
Some of them had experienced disparaging comments about their appearance or their investment abilities.
Male colleagues making unwelcome
advances at female co-workers on nights-out was not an unusual occurrence, according to seven women who worked in a variety of different
roles for hedge funds, including as traders.
One hedge fund reassigned the female toilet on the trading floor as a men’s toilet, meaning
women on the investment team had to walk to another part of the building, two of the women said.
None of the women, who requested anonymity
to avoid damaging their careers, worked at the hedge funds named in this story.
Clare Flynn Levy, a former hedge fund portfolio manager who
now runs her own behavioral analytics company, said women might put up with a toxic work culture for a while but ultimately they tended to
leave.
“In retrospect, I think I used a combination of working very hard, laughing off the sleazy bits and occasionally putting my foot
down if I felt someone had crossed a line,” she said.
Kosenko, the recruitment consultant, said she has had a hard time convincing women
to join hedge funds where they might be the first female on the trading floor.
But with investors increasingly considering diversity when
deciding where to put their money, some hedge funds are looking to shake up their ranks
Last year, Kosenko had five meetings with hedge fund clients about hiring women
In the first few months of this year, she has had four.
“I think in general the big trend is let’s grow the talent and let’s go
outside of what we are used to — white males from Goldman Sachs,” she said.
