Goldman and Morgan Stanley Ready to Share More Diversity Data

(Bloomberg) -- After years of avoiding full transparency on workforce demographics, two of the biggest U.S. banks, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, said they’re ready to open up.

“It’s a way to show the world that we’re going to be accountable,” Susan Reid, Morgan Stanley’s global head of diversity and inclusion said during Bloomberg’s New Voices event Tuesday. “Sharing data is part of what we all need to do.”

Erika Irish Brown, who oversees diversity at Goldman Sachs, said during the same panel that the firm will release a “much larger-scale” report on its employees in April.

“Everybody recognizes the need to be more transparent,” she said. “Our people want that transparency.”

Morgan Stanley published its first ever diversity report in recent weeks, providing a rare glimpse into the bank’s employee demographics. Reid said the firm had “arrived at a place where we were ready” to reveal the data.

Much of the bank’s leadership is White and male. In 2018, of 1,705 executives, 23 were Black men and 14 were Black women, according to the report. Women held 303, or 17.8%, of those executive, senior official, and manager jobs.

“In some instances we’re going to do well, and we’re going to show progress year over year, and then there are going to be times when you might be flat, or you might even take a step back,” Reid said. “And I think that’s part of the journey.”

For years, Morgan Stanley and most of its rivals have publicly released percentages instead of the hard numbers. Racial justice protests prodded many major U.S. businesses to share more granular employee data. Morgan Stanley was among 34 companies on the S&P 100 that promised to publicly disclose such information.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.