Goldman Sachs Will Pay €200 Million To End Women’s Underpay

(CTN News) – A class-action lawsuit filed against Goldman Sachs claiming it systematically underpaid women has been settled for $215 million (€195 million).

According to a joint statement from the bank and plaintiffs’ lawyers, the New York-based bank reached a settlement with lawyers representing approximately 2,800 female associates and vice presidents. Attorney fees are expected to account for about a third of the settlement.

In accordance with the statement, Goldman Sachs will engage a third party expert to conduct an additional analysis of its performance evaluation and promotion processes for the next three years.

It is anticipated that the upcoming trial in New York next month will provide a rare opportunity for testimony about gender discrimination in the financial sector, where all but one of the six largest US banks have only ever been run by men.

As a result of the case, the industry was closely watched in which women have long complained of unfair treatment causing their careers to be derailed.

Despite the fact that the trial was to focus on statistics related to pay and promotion, and a judge had ruled that a boys’ club environment did not qualify for class treatment, the trial was poised to be much more than a mere tally of numbers.

Thanks in part to the testimony of executives, the report would have likely examined some aspects of Goldman Sachs workplace.

Despite the settlement, Smith Barney still owes more than $100 million to resolve the Boom-Boom Room suit, which alleged harassment and discrimination against the firm decades ago.

In 1997, Cristina Chen-Oster, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, joined Goldman Sachs and sold convertible bonds.

A complaint of discrimination was filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in July 2005, and she sued the company in 2010.

It was Goldman’s goal – and he succeeded in some cases – to have some of the women in the case sent to arbitration, which is a more secretive process.

In addition to mandatory arbitration agreements, corporations have a number of other tools at their disposal.

For many years, nondisclosure agreements and settlements have been used on Wall Street and beyond to keep claims of bad behavior and unfair treatment out of the public eye.

In recent years, Goldman Sachs and its peers have pledged to diversify their ranks, acknowledging their improvement. Although Goldman’s partner class was composed of 29 percent women last year, it was Goldman Sachs’ most inclusive promotion class to date.

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