Bravo! A lady on top represents women’s empowerment. Man Group, top leading hedge funds firm, has considered the first female CEO in its 240-year existence. According to a recent announcement, Robyn Grew, 54, will follow Luke Ellis, 60, as CEO of the globe’s largest publicly traded hedge fund firm on September 1. Grew joined Man Group in 2009 and is currently its president, will relocate to the UK for the post but will continue to spend substantial time in the US. Grew joined the firm in 2009 after serving her expertise at Barclays Plc, Lehman Brothers, and LIFFE, London’s most extensive futures and options market, which has since been renamed ICE Futures Europe.
In a second announcement in February, the company named Anne Wade as its first female chairman, succeeding John Cryan, retiring at the end of 2023.
According to a March Preqin survey, women comprise only 21.3% of employees in the hundreds of hedge funds and alternative investment firms globally. According to the data provider, they only hold 13.6% of senior positions, and the proportion of female board members is even smaller, at 10.3%. Some success has been achieved in some areas of the sector. Mala Gaonkar, the founder of SurgoCap Partners, established her hedge fund with $1.8 billion under management, the biggest debut for a woman-led hedge fund in history.
Why are women lacking at the top of hedge funds?
Regarding talent, the hedge fund business continues to outperform many other areas of finance, except when it comes to hiring women. When it comes to elite employment in the financial industry, women remain in the minority. The investment team is the most sought-after position in hedge funds. Portfolio managers or traders decide where to invest client funds and are generally the highest-paid employees. Such positions serve as a springboard for star managers to form their own businesses in the future, producing the next generation of hedge funds.
Hedge funds claim they have difficulty finding women to serve as portfolio managers, even though women are more represented in other areas, such as compliance and legal counsel. These are middle- and back-office roles seldom engaged in investing calls. People in financial services argue that if hedge firms cast a wider net for possible applicants and offered better maternity packages and mentorships, more female candidates would emerge for trading positions.
Unlike the rest of the financial world, where major, publicly traded corporations are now compelled to report gender pay disparities and are under public pressure to have more women in critical positions, hedge funds can generally operate under the radar.
The hiring of portfolio managers by hedge funds in the US is not reflected in comparable numbers, but information on recent U.S. company establishments reveals that men continue to dominate the sector. Women-led businesses handled just approximately 3 per cent of the assets in new funds formed between 2013 and 2017, according to information from Hedge Fund Intelligence.
Some real-life encounters and opinions by experts.
According to Jane Buchan, who spent over 20 years managing investments as the chief executive of PAAMCO, one of the largest hedge fund investors in the world, female money managers must work harder to earn investors’ trust.
The only UK hedge fund company to sign up for the British government’s Women in Finance Charter, which sets aims to improve female participation in the top echelons of the City, is Man Group. At Man Group worldwide, women held 13% of investment management positions in 2018, up from 11% in 2017 and 8% in 2013.
Hedge funds may be a challenging industry for female investment managers, according to interviews with some women who currently work or formerly worked as portfolio managers in Britain and the United States. Some of them had endured insulting remarks regarding their appearance or their capacity for making investments. Women who worked in a range of various jobs for hedge funds, including as traders, said that male coworkers making unwanted passes towards female coworkers on evenings out was not an unusual occurrence.
Women could put up with a bad work environment for a while, but eventually, they tend to quit, according to Clare Flynn Levy, a former hedge fund portfolio manager who now has her own behavioural analytics firm.
Kosenko, the recruiting consultant, claimed it was challenging to persuade women to work at hedge funds, where they may be the only female traders.
Conclusion.
However, some hedge funds attempt to restructure their organisation as investors increasingly consider diversity when determining where to invest their money. We have come a long way, from women not having the power to vote to women taking top company positions. Also, we have many more to go!
Proofread & Published By Naveenika Chauhan
