When the #MeToo movement first took off
and we were getting women coming forward
and telling their stories of harassment, assault
or discrimination in their workplace.
We're like this is only a matter of time
before we get some really good stories
coming out of the financial industry because
we know that it exists.
Wall Street just like lots of areas has
some serious and pretty deep problems.
But a big cultural moment has not happened.
Now to the #MeToo movement growing this morning
in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
High powered men across entertainment, media,
technology and politics have been brought down
by women who feel empowered to tell their stories.
But on Wall Street a system of silence
has protected the status quo.
The primary difference for women on Wall Street
versus other industries is money.
And money is power and Wall Street has the most money
and most power of any industry.
You know story by story we get this peek
into this machine, different arms of the machine.
Those arms explain why there was no revolution
in finance this year.
Instead there were rare moments of revelation
that pierced the silence.
Keeping people quiet doesn't make it better
for the business.
You don't hire the best people if you exclude people
who are brave.
This is the story of the forces
that have kept the #MeToo reckoning
from hitting Wall Street.
At least so far.
Women didn't want to come forward with their stories.
They didn't want to go on the record.
The women I talked to didn't even want to name
the people who had assaulted them or hurt their careers
in a particular way.
And we kind of had to take a step back
and say why is that happening.
And evaluate what is the culture in Wall Street
or the system in Wall Street
that's keeping women from doing that?
There is a machine of silence
that we've learned about that has to do
with arbitration and human resources
and public relations and a culture of fear
and a culture of money.
And all those things together combine
to create kind of a wall between allegations
and transparency.
First of all you have this very male dominated industry.
About 26% of senior executives on Wall Street
are women and when you get to the CEO level
it's abysmally low.
Women only make up 8% of CEOs
at major financial institutions.
And in the history of Wall Street, no woman has ever led
any of the six largest U.S. banks.
I remember Wall Street women saying to me,
what do you think Wall Street values?
They value relationships and they value secrecy
and they value loyalty and if I dare
to go against those things, I will be exiled.
And if someone does decide to complain
it isn't done in public.
But rather hidden behind a widespread system
of arbitration.
Arbitration needs to be relabeled.
It needs to be called forced silence.
Arbitration is a private system
that takes fights behind closed doors
away from a judge and jury.
It was originally used to solve industry disputes
but Wall Street has helped it spread to all kinds
of fights including harassment.
Civil Rights issues should be dealt with in court.
Civil Rights issues should be transparent.
That's Lee Stowell, a Wall Street veteran
whose suing Cantor Fitzgerald for harassment,
discrimination and retaliation.
But that's just a part of her fight.
She's also battling to stay away from arbitration.
I want to go to court because I want it to be transparent.
It's not a female thing.
It's not a male thing, it's a human thing.
What's so wild for us as reporters following Lee Stowell's
story is that she had not one but apparently
two arbitration agreements Cantor says.
So basically she said, I'm not supposed to be
thrown out of court, I'm supposed to stay in this venue
and the court agreed with her.
Cantor denies her allegations
and is appealing the decision to let her stay in court.
But these days judges all the way up to the Supreme Court
have been siding with arbitration.
From Wall Street's perspective that system
is quicker, cheaper, quieter and just as fair
as going to court.
Women like Lee see it differently.
For those of us who are not corporations,
we want to be able to show the evidence
and we want to be able to change behavior.
Women are not learning about each other.
They're being isolated from each other.
So they can't really come together
and bring something bigger against a bank or an institution
and say, you have a major problem here
because it's all in the hush-hush system
that nobody knows about.
While Lee was fighting against arbitration,
women thousands of miles away were struggling
to have their stories heard inside Lloyd's of London.
Lloyd's is a 331-year-old exchange for the worldwide
insurance market that's steeped in tradition.
So this is the large loss book, where we show
a book for the current day and a corresponding book
from 100 years ago.
Much of the work there is still done face-to-face
by mostly middle-aged white men on paper
and sealed with rubber stamps.
But reporting from Bloomberg uncovered
that Lloyd's also has a deep seated tradition
of sexual harassment.
We spoke to women who had been attacked by their bosses
in pubs and taxis.
And we'd spoken to other women who were deluged
with text, graphic text, graphic emails
from their employers basically soliciting for sex.
What's so sinister about these stories
isn't just the picture they paint of rich men behaving
badly but the way HR protected them.
At least in my experience for the Wall Street firms.
Most of the time say that they simply can't go to HR.
It's just not an option.
Because if they do, HR is then going to report them
to either the exact male that they just complained about
or somebody else in a position to make things difficult.
But of the ones who did go to HR,
they reported being discouraged from pursuing
their complaints further.
They were warned about the possibility of being marked out
as difficult women.
So they kept quiet.
Lloyd's first female CEO, Inga Beale,
tried to change that.
But she was met with hostility, including a death threat.
And was eventually replaced by John Neal in 2018.
Bloomberg's reporting hit a few months later.
Two executives at the company have now resigned
following allegations of sexual harassment.
Sometimes when we're reporting our stories like this
companies just deny what we find
and say, look everything is fine.
In the case of Lloyd's, Gavin's reporting was so powerful
that the CEO of this insurance market
came out afterwards and said, yeah, this is pretty much
unacceptable and we will change.
This is not the Lloyd's that I want to be part of
and not the Lloyd's that many of my colleagues feel
they want to be part of either.
Lloyd's unveiled a whistleblower hotline,
banned alcohol and announced a lifetime ban
for sexual harassers.
Whether there is any long-term impact from these measures
it's too early, I think to tell.
And while the Lloyd's story
showed how women's stories can help bring an antiquated
institution into the 21st Century,
a conference in California showed what happens
when the industry's bystanders break their silence.
Everyone it's Alex Chalekian,
just got back from the Tiburone CEO Summit dinner.
In October of 2019, Alex Chalekian
who runs a firm called Lake Avenue Financial
was attending a conference and did something unheard
of on Wall Street.
He publicly spoke out against someone
at an invite-only conference.
Things that were said by Ken Fisher
were just absolutely horrifying.
He made comments about genitalia.
He talked about picking up on a girl
and don't show them what's in your pants.
And shortly after, Bloomberg reporter
Sabrina Willmer was able to speak to Ken Fisher
on the phone.
His initial reaction is that he didn't think
it was a big deal because he's been saying
this a very long time.
And nobody has questioned it.
Ken Fisher was speaking in a way that he was used
to speaking which was gross, quite frankly.
I don't know if I could but if was 30-years-old
and I had to do over again, I'd have more sex.
While I could, while I could.
Once you get older you're like a Christmas tree,
you're firm once a year and the balls are for decoration.
But instead of awkward laugher
behind closed doors, this year Fisher's institutional
clients from Texas to New Hampshire yanked
about $4 billion from his investment firm.
Fisher CEO, Damian Ornani, even went directly
in front of a Los Angeles pension board to apologize.
I'd just like to apologize.
That we're here today talking about this
and these inappropriate comments happened
in the first place.
Ken knows they were wrong, I know they are wrong.
But for pension board members
like Brian Pendleton that apology wasn't enough.
I'm incredibly proud of what the L.A. Police
and Fire Pension Commission did by decisively
terminating the contract with Ken Fisher.
That it hopefully sends a loud message
to the financial community.
While about $4 billion was lost, the firm still
manages $115 billion.
And the company has said that since the incident
their assets have actually grown.
And we talked to each other inside the newsroom
and we ask is this as much change as we're gonna see.
It's plausible that is as far from the status quo
as things are gonna veer and things will get back
to business as usual.
I'm not in favor of outing other women
but I will say that women have reached out to me
and told me that we need to keep this going.
I'm certainly a drop in bucket to the issue
and the only way to change that is for a couple
of people to stand up and I'm hopeful
that other people will stand next to me.
We're never going to stop trying to tell women's stories.
What we can hope for is that the industry is moving
in a direction in which more women feel comfortable
telling their stories.