A 15-year veteran of Goldman Sachs, and one of the minority of women who makes it to managing director, has been poached by Credit Suisse to lead its European back office functions.
Nicola Kane joined Credit Suisse as European head of operations and global head of collateral, clearing, valuations and liquidity in June, according to sources close to the situation. She left Goldman Sachs in May after nearly 15 years at the bank.
Kane was made managing director at Goldman Sachs in 2006, a year in which just 35 women were promoted out of 262 individuals to make the rank. For the past five years, the proportion of women making it to MD at Goldman has been around 20-25%.
Stereotypically, it’s been difficult for women to maintain their career trajectory in demanding front office roles in banking, particularly if they decide to take time out to have children. However, our research suggests that it’s not the operational functions where women usually make it to the top ranks – investor relations and PR, HR and recruitment, compliance, retail banking and sales and marketing are sectors where women are well represented, according to the eFinancialCareers database. Trading, IT, quantitative finance, private equity and capital markets are the most male dominated.
This week Goldman made a move to counter this argument, by promoting Stacy Bash-Polley, a partner and former head of sales for all US interest rate, currency, mortgage and emerging markets products, to the role of head of client relationship management and strategy for the Americas.
Credit Suisse has been actively looking to cut costs over the past three years and the back office has inevitably been subject to this. Like many investment banks, it’s been shifting back office jobs out of the now-pricey location of Singapore and into India and Poland.
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