FLASH FRIDAY: Good and Bad News for Women in Finance

FLASH FRIDAY is a weekly content series looking at the past, present and future of capital markets trading and technology. FLASH FRIDAY is sponsored by Instinet, a Nomura company.

Jane Fraser, chief executive of Citi, received the largest pay rise among Wall Street bosses in 2024, but it is not unalloyed good news for women in finance.

Her total package for 2024 rose by approximately one third to $34.5m as Citi’s share price has outperformed peers according to a report from Yahoo Finance, which increased her stock-based compensation.

Fraser’s total compensation was still behind David Solomon at Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, who both had received a total $39m in 2024. 

However, Citi is one of the firms, alongside Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan, that is cutting or watering down language on their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to avoid a crackdown from the Trump administration according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

In the UK, the Bank of England has said it will not implement proposed rules aimed at improving diversity and inclusion in regulated firms following a consultation in 2023 by the UK regulators.

Sam Woods, deputy governor and prudential regulation chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, said in a letter that there is a growing emphasis on reducing regulatory burdens on firms so it does not currently plan to publish new rules on diversity and inclusion.

“In the meantime, we will continue to support voluntary industry initiatives and will remain alert to the risks of group-think within firms using our existing supervisory approaches on management, governance, risk management and controls,” Woods added. 

Those voluntary initiatives have been continuing during International Women’s Month. For example,  data management company Solidatus has compiled a list of the top 20 women in data as only 25% of data professionals in the UK are female. The list includes: 

  • Helen Hunter, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Barclays UK
  • Dizem Ozalp Sari – Head of Data, BNP Paribas
  • Cansu Subasi – Global Product Owner at HSBC
  • Debbie Lawrence -Group Head, Data Strategy & Management at LSEG

The World Federation of Exchanges has announced its fifth annual WFE Women Leaders list which consists of 20 women chosen by its committee of distinguished leaders.

The European Association of CCP Clearing Houses (EACH) celebrated two years of its Women in Clearing Network. In March 2023 EACH members created the network as a LinkedIn group and it has grown to more than 200 participants. In 2024 the Women in Clearing Series was launched to publish a monthly interview with an inspiring female leader on the Women in Clearing Network on LinkedIn and on the EACH website.

And last but not least, Markets Media Group held its inaugural Women in Finance Latin America Awards presentation on March 6 at the Four Seasons Hotel Mexico City.