Stark Lessons from Wall Street’s #MeToo Moment

Women filed a wave of lawsuits and arbitrations against financial firms in the 1990s and early 2000s, disgusted by a culture of rampant sexual harassment and gender discrimination. The biggest cases of that era collectively drew thousands of participants in class actions and led to large settlements including $150 million against Smith Barney and $250 million against Merrill Lynch.

At a time when the long-term consequences of #MeToo on women’s careers is an open questions, I looked at court records, tracked down plaintiffs and spoke with a dozen employment lawyers to see how things had turned out for the women — and how things had turned out for the men who allegedly harassed them. My findings were sobering. You can read my story today for The Intercept here.

Wall Street Goes Silent on #MeToo

A woman who is sexually harassed at work is six and a half times more likely to change jobs than a woman who is not. So you might think that, a year and a half into the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment would be a front-burner issue for the people paid to diversity Wall Street.

Yet at a two-day conference of diversity experts in the securities industry in New York in late May, not one of the seven panels addressed the challenge of sexual harassment in the workplace. I wrote about it in my latest piece for The Intercept. You can read it here.

A Harvard professor filed a shareholder lawsuit to restrict shareholder rights

The push continues to allow public companies to ban shareholders from suing for fraud. You can read my story for The Intercept here.

States begin to crack down on broker abuse as the SEC dithers

Federal regulators are letting brokers get off easy when it comes to serving clients’ best interest. So individual states are stepping in to counter the lax federal regulation. I wrote about it today in a story for The Intercept.

Entire Industries Are Being Blacklisted By Insurers Over #MeToo Liability

#MeToo is getting expensive for the insurance companies who issue policies to errant companies. I wrote about it today in this piece for The Intercept.

Google and Facebook ended mandatory arbitration for sexual harassment claims. Will workers outside the tech industry benefit?

Seven days after the Nov. 1 walkout of 20,000 Google workers outraged over a NY Times investigation of the company’s lenient treatment of sexual harassers, Google said it would make arbitration optional for sexual harassment claims. I wrote about it today for The Intercept. You can read my story here.

Wall Street Moves to Gut Post-Crisis Financial Rules

ON THE CAMPAIGN trail, Donald Trump frequently pledged to “dismantle” the Dodd-Frank financial reforms passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. On Wednesday, with the Federal Reserve’s release of a proposal to roll back capital and liquidity requirements, he caught his big whale. You can read my story for The Intercept here.

Will Shareholders Lose the Right to Sue Over Corporate Fraud?

Earlier this month, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce told Politico that she “absolutely” thinks that public companies should have the option to require arbitration, which would strip shareholders of their right to bring lawsuits like the one Kacouris filed. The comments by Peirce, a Donald Trump nominee who took office in January, amplified previous remarks by other SEC officials. Commissioner Michael Piwowar, for example, who departed his post in July, told an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation last year that he would “encourage” companies to come talk to the SEC about putting mandatory arbitration clauses in their charters.

Read more about this in my story today in The Intercept.

Susan Antilla

Journalist and Author

The Intercept