Europe's biggest banks are falling behind on their promises to promote more women, at least when measured by the very top jobs.
In the past two years not a single female chief executive officer has been appointed by one of Europe's top 30 banks, despite almost half of the CEOs in that group being replaced in the same time frame, data collated by Bloomberg show.
That echoes the findings in a survey published by the ratings company DBRS Morningstar on Tuesday, which shows gender diversity improving at a board level but lagging in executive leadership positions. Germany, Europe's largest economy, was second-from-bottom in terms of female board representation. In a larger sample of 43 institutions, women held 12% of CEO jobs and all of those were appointed before 2020.
"Action needs to be taken in order to achieve greater gender parity across leadership roles," senior analyst Charlotte Cervin and head of European financial institutions Elisabeth Rudman wrote in the report. The report went on to argue that high levels of diversity in the workplace can improve innovation and employee engagement, and "there is some evidence that companies with high levels of gender diversity financially outperform their peers."
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The 14 banks who have changed chief executive since 2020 include some of the biggest names in global finance such as Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC Group, Santander and UBS. Many of Europe's largest banks have repeatedly promised to increase gender diversity among their top as the issue has become a major concerns among stakeholders including investors and regulators. But faced with the opportunity to turn words into action as a vacancy opens up at the top, the lenders continue to choose men over women.
