Goldman Sachs pays women in UK 56% less than male colleagues

Goldman Sachs Group pays women in the UK an average of 56 per cent less than male colleagues, another stark example of the entrenched gender imbalances in the richest corners of the global economy.

The gap widens to 72 per cent for year-end discretionary bonuses, a spokesman for the Wall Street bank said. The newly required disclosures compare what all of Goldman’s male UK employees make with what all female employees do. The gap reflects the high concentration of men in senior and lucrative positions, while a bigger share of lower-paid jobs are held by women.

The figures show the imbalances that still exist at the biggest financial firms and keep a spotlight on Goldman Sachs, which has fewer women among its top executives than some top rivals. President David Solomon, who emerged from a small and all-male group to become frontrunner to succeed Blankfein this week, has taken a leading role in the firm’s efforts to improve diversity.

Goldman Sachs said in a memo to staff Thursday that it aims to have women make up half its workforce in the future, starting with an even split in its class of college graduates by 2021. The bank didn’t provide a timeline for achieving gender parity. “We also need to hold ourselves accountable to providing more opportunities for women and diverse professionals to rise to the highest levels of our firm,” Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and Solomon wrote in the memo.

The disparity in average UK pay at Goldman Sachs is narrower than at HSBC Holdings, where women were paid an average 59 per cent less than male employees. The national average pay gap is about 18 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics. Goldman also reported figures for a smaller UK unit that had a 36 per cent gap. Goldman Sachs said in Thursday’s memo that it pays men and women equally, when comparing similar roles and performance.

“We are a meritocracy, and gender is not a factor in the way that we pay our people,” the bank said in a statement on its website Friday. “We pay women and men in the same way, using the same compensation criteria, including the nature of their role and their performance.”

While Goldman Sachs is one of the earliest international lenders to disclose its gender pay data, the bank was not among the first to sign up to a UK government-backed charter committing financial services firms to fill more senior management positions with women. Today it joined 44 other companies, including UBS Group, in signing up. The charter now covers more than 650,000 financial services employees in the UK.

All companies with more than 250 UK employees have to disclose their gender pay gaps by April 4. As of Friday, only about 2,700 of an expected 9,000 companies had submitted data. As of Friday, only about 2,700 of an expected 9,000 companies had submitted data to the government website. Among large companies, HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank, has so far reported the highest mean gender pay gap. The privately-owned fashion retailer Phase Eight is higher still at 65 per cent.

UBS last week reported an average gender pay gap of 31 per cent for its UK-based employees, while BNP Paribas reported 38 per cent. The other large USbased banks have yet to report, though in recent weeks they’ve voluntarily published information about their adjusted gender pay gaps.