Anne Tatlock will never forget her first business trip.
It was the mid-1960s, and Tatlock, then an asset manager for Smith Barney & Co (now Salomon Smith Barney), was heading into an all-male supper club in Minneapolis with a team of male colleagues to give a presentation to a client. But she was turned away, and only after some finagling by her boss was she whisked through the kitchen and smuggled into a private room for the meeting.
No one is slamming doors in Tatlock's face today. Since 1999, she has been chairman and chief executive of Fiduciary Trust International, a 700-employee global asset-management firm with more than US$50 billion in assets. It is unusual enough for a woman to run a large corporation, much less a Wall Street firm, but Fiduciary Trust stands out for more than just promoting Tatlock. In an industry overwhelmingly male and rife with accusations of sexism, it employs more women than men.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
Fifty-one percent of the company's employees are women, and while that is about the same level as six years ago, the proportion of women in senior management positions has shot up to 30 percent from 6 percent and their representation on the board to 15 percent from 11 percent.
Those numbers may set Fiduciary Trust apart, but women are making inroads in the once all-male world of finance. A study last year by Catalyst, a New York group that does research on women's issues, found that women accounted for 11 percent of the corporate officers in the securities industry, up from 3 percent in 1996, for example, though their representations in top posts of the diversified financial industry, at 20 percent, and of savings institutions, at 22 percent, were little changed.
"Wall Street's glass ceiling is starting to crack," said Peggy Klaus, a consultant who coaches high-level women in the financial industry. "This is not the same industry as it was a few years ago."
Tatlock says Fiduciary, which was acquired last month by Franklin Resources, has achieved its high concentration of women not because of some concerted drive to recruit them but mostly because it has come to be regarded as an escape route from the sexist attitudes often found on Wall Street.
While some women have been climbing up the ladder, others say the old ways die hard.
Within the last two years, both Merrill Lynch and Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney have settled class-action sexual-discrimination lawsuits with thousands of women at both companies. And this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that the investment bank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter fired a high-ranking sales representative, Allison Schieffelin, because she accused the company of sexual discrimination.
Klaus, the consultant, says more subtle forms of discrimination are widespread. She cites the experience of a woman client who is a high-level bond trader. "She was standing around one day and a male co-worker came up and complimented her on her pearl necklace and said he'd like to get his wife a similar one for their anniversary," Klaus said.
A moment later, Klaus says, another male colleague joined the pair, and the two men began to chat about business. "The only way they could relate to her was in a feminine way," she said. "When it came to business discussions, she was completely excluded."
H. Penny Knuff, a senior vice president who first joined Fiduciary Trust in 1994 as an assistant vice president and portfolio manager, had a similar awakening after she left in 1998 to join a Boston firm.
"I was sitting around a conference table with my male colleagues when it was announced that Carly Fiorina had been appointed to be the head of Hewlett-Packard," Knuff said.
Her co-workers speculated whether Fiorina had a family and how she would be able to juggle her work and personal commitments.
"I knew if her name had been Carl, we never would have been having this conversation," she said. Unhappy with the atmosphere there, she returned to Fiduciary Trust.
Such occurrences are less likely at Fiduciary Trust, where having so many women at the top has created a "true meritocracy," according to Michael Magdol, Fiduciary Trust's vice chairman and chief financial officer. Magdol says Tatlock's emphasis on consensus contrasts with the authoritarian management style at many firms.
Edwina Dean-McCrimmon, a business-development associate at the firm, said, "We're definitely very team-oriented, and I think that has something to do with all of the high-profile females around here."
Fiduciary Trust earned its woman-friendly reputation long before Tatlock arrived in 1984.
The company had a few women in key positions in the 1930s and 1940s, which was highly unusual," she said. "They paved the way for other women to get promoted."
The number of women at Fiduciary Trust surged in the 1990s as a number of male portfolio managers retired and the company expanded overseas. "We had a lot of positions to fill," Tatlock said, and with huge numbers of women suddenly graduating from the nation's elite business schools, failing to tap into that talent pool "would have been an enormous mistake."
So what advice do women give to other women who want to make it on Wall Street? "Find a company where someone has already set a tone for women to become leaders," said Katherine Tobin, senior director of research at Catalyst.
Tatlock, the Fiduciary Trust chairman, is more blunt. "If you're at a firm that's not interested in creating a culture where you can grow, cut out of there fast," she said. "I always tell women: `Don't sit around and complain. Find a place that wants you.'"
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
REGIONAL STABILITY: Taipei thanked the Biden administration for authorizing its 16th sale of military goods and services to uphold Taiwan’s defense and safety The US Department of State has approved the sale of US$228 million of military goods and services to Taiwan, the US Department of Defense said on Monday. The state department “made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale” to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US for “return, repair and reshipment of spare parts and related equipment,” the defense department’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a news release. Taiwan had requested the purchase of items and services which include the “return, repair and reshipment of classified and unclassified spare parts for aircraft and related equipment; US Government
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from