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Article

14 Jul 2006

Author:
Patrick McGeeghan, New York Times

On Wall Street, a Question of Bias [USA]

Wall Street has long been seen as an exclusive club, and the discrimination suit against Merrill [Merrill Lynch] underscores that the industry is still struggling to overcome its reputation as a workplace where only white men are comfortable. In the last decade, the nation’s three biggest brokerage firms — Merrill, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup — have paid out more than $400 million to settle sex-discrimination suits filed by women. In an amended complaint filed this week, the plaintiffs in the race-discrimination case contend that Merrill has systemically limited the opportunities for blacks to succeed as brokers, denied them a fair chance to rise into management and retaliated against those who complained... Complaints of discrimination within Merrill have existed for more than 30 years... Only 128 of Merrill’s full-fledged financial advisers were black at the end of last year out of the more than 14,000 sales people in its brokerage operations, according to an amended complaint filed this week. Merrill, which employs 55,000, has brokers in every state, but the suit contends that in more than half of them...the firm did not employ one black financial adviser at year-end. [also refers to UBS, PaineWebber (now UBS)]