The US bank Goldman Sachs settles with 2,800 female plaintiffs for 215 million dollars. The bank employees had filed a class action lawsuit for unfair pay: female employees had been systematically discriminated against in terms of pay.
The settlement ends a years-long dispute between the major US bank Goldman Sachs and female employees, shortly before the scheduled public hearing in court in New York, as reported by the Bloomberg agency. The scheduled trial would have led to various testimonies on inequality between men and women in the financial industry, and the Wall Street giant apparently wanted to avoid that.
The lawsuit was first filed in 2010 by Cristina Chen-Oster, an MIT graduate who joined Goldman Sachs in 1997 and sold convertible bonds. Manager Magazin reports that Chen-Oster had already filed a complaint of discrimination with a US federal agency in 2005 and that numerous other female Goldman employees had later joined her suit.
As Manager Magazin further reports, the case has been closely followed in the industry over the years because all but one of the six major US banks were run by men only.
Anke Dembowski is a financial journalist and author of various investment fund-related and other financial books. She is also a co-founder of the "Fondsfrauen" network.