Goldman Sachs has the biggest average UK gender pay gap of any major investment bank in the City, as the Wall Street giant’s difference widened as many of its rivals closed the gap this year.
The US investment bank is set to publish a mean hourly gender pay gap of 54% for 2023/24 for Goldman Sachs International. The numbers were published on 4 April.
This number is up slightly from 2022/23 and Goldman’s biggest gap for six years. Goldman had 3,332 employees within its UK operation at the end of last year. The Financial Times first reported the mean number.
This figure means that Goldman’s average gender pay gap for its international business exceeds any major investment bank in the UK, according to Financial News analysis of disclosures. The numbers at the bank come after a report by The Wall Street Journal showing that Goldman has lost a number of senior female partners and that many women have been passed over for key leadership roles.
The average gender pay gap at JPMorgan Securities was 47%, according to numbers disclosed by the bank, which is down from 49.3% last year and nearly 55% in 2019. Morgan Stanley’s mean gender pay gap also declined slightly to 48%, while Citigroup Global Markets dropped to 43.5%, down from 48.4% a year earlier.
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After Goldman Sachs, the next biggest UK gender pay gap at a City investment bank is at Rothschild & Co, which posted an average difference of 48.9%, down from 49.2% a year earlier.
Goldman’s median pay gap is 28.5%, which has narrowed slightly compared with a year earlier. Some believe median is a more accurate measure of the gender pay gap as the mean can be skewed by a small number of high-earning individuals. The bonus gap and proportion of women among the highest earners were also not included.
Meanwhile, Goldman 24.3% of Goldman’s highest earners are women, which us up year on year and ahead of many of its peers. Its median bonus gap is 57.8%, which again is better than many of its rivals.
“Importantly, this gender pay gap report does not account for pay in similar role or tenure, but we know that we need to do more to increase representation of women at the senior-most levels of the firm,” a Goldman spokesperson said.
Despite some high-profile female departures in recent weeks including Stephanie Cohen, who previously co-headed its consumer and wealth management business and Beth Hammack, who co-headed its global financing business, the proportion of women making the cut in managing director and partner promotion rounds at Goldman has increased.
In its biennial managing director promotion round last year, 31% were women, while they made up 29% of its latest partner class in 2022, which the bank said was its most diverse ever.
Last year, 42% of Goldman’s experienced hires — from analyst through to partner — were women. Of this, 40% of managing director hires were female.
Wall Street banks continue to lag their European rivals on average gender pay gaps in the UK. At Deutsche Bank, this number was an all-time low of 29.4%, while the mean gap was 40.3% at UBS, 40.7% at HSBC and 42.2% at Barclays.
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