Women at bank convene, allege gender bias in wealth division
About a dozen female executives in Wells Fargo WFC -0.11% & Co.’s wealth-management division gathered in Scottsdale, Ariz., in June after an internal conference. They’d had enough.
Women should be at home taking care of their children, some of the executives said they had been told over the years by Jay Welker, president of Wells Fargo’s private bank and head of the wealth-management division since 2003. Qualified women had recently been turned down for several top roles that went to male applicants. When the women raised concerns, they felt ignored.
The meeting represented most of the 12 regional managing directors in wealth management, out of 45, who are women. Above them, all seven senior managing directors overseeing regions are men. The other senior wealth-management roles held by women are positions that, because they don’t run a line of business or oversee profits and losses, lack the same prestige and responsibility that comes with making money for the bank.
.. Some of the executives said part of the investigation focuses on at least one formal human-resources complaint against Mr. Welker over gender bias. Some of the executives said Mr. Welker often called women “girls” or told them to put their “big girl panties on.”.. The “meeting of 12” and the internal investigation show how the #MeToo movement, which has shaken up Hollywood, politics and business, is spilling into a broader discussion about whether women are being fairly promoted into senior roles where they can influence an organization’s culture.The conversation is particularly acute in industries that, like wealth management, have long been dominated by men.. Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment management unit, which includes the wealth-management division, was already in tumult before the gender bias investigation. Whistleblowers have alleged that financial advisers there pushed clients into products or investing platforms intended to generate more revenue for the bank and bigger bonuses for employees rather than the best returns for customers
A sociologist realized that if she were ever going to understand global inequality she would have to become one of the people who helps create it. So she trained to become a wealth manager to the ultra-rich.
A sociologist realized that if she were ever going to understand global inequality she would have to become one of the people who helps create it. So she trained to become a wealth manager to the ultra-rich.
.. Few outlets, however, noted the professional interventions that made that happen: Mitt Romney employs at least one wealth manager to create and maintain those offshore shelters.
.. Without breaking any laws (for the most part), they enable their clients to sidestep many laws and policies—especially those designed to prevent the kind of neo-feudal concentrations of wealth emerging now.
.. In designing my own research strategy, I was particularly inspired by the work of John van Maanen—now a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management—who famously did his doctoral research on a California police department in the early 1970s, not long after the Watts riots.
.. Like van Maanen, I disclosed my real name, institutional affiliation, and research aims throughout the research process; I did not, that is, go “undercover.” Whether I was attending classes or professional society meetings, I always wore a name tag that included my place of work, so it was clear that I was a scholar linked to a research institution.
.. Finally, people in a technically complex profession—especially one that carries some degree of social stigma—don’t have many opportunities to vent about their work lives with anyone: Their family and friends are unlikely to understand the nature of the work, and with professional peers, there would always be concerns about giving away “trade secrets” or violating client confidentiality.
.. a domain of libertarian fantasy made real, in which professional intervention made it possible for the world’s wealthiest people to be free not only of tax obligations but of any laws they found inconvenient.
.. Looking at a costly divorce? No problem—just hire a wealth manager to put your assets in an offshore trust. Then the assets are no longer in your name, and can’t be attached in a judgment.
.. No litigant on earth has been able to break a Cook Islands trust, including the U.S. government
.. virtually all of them saw themselves as misunderstood good guys.
.. they portrayed themselves as protectors of elderly clients from rapacious heirs, facilitators of development finance to emerging markets, and quasi-family members to wealthy parents seeking advice on how to prevent their children from being destroyed by idleness and easy access to drugs.
.. “The secret point of money and power is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake…but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.”.. the professionals ensure privacy for their clients. They keep the wealthy out of the newspapers and off the radar of regulatory authorities as much as possible... make it possible for the wealthiest people in the world to gain all the benefits of society, while flouting its laws.