Female Executives Have Left BankAmerica
BankAmerica’s top 10 female executives have either been demoted or resigned since the mega-merger with NationsBank, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday.
Before the merger, San Francisco-based BankAmerica had a history of promoting women. By 1998, 11 of the bank’s 45 executives were female. Catalyst, a New York nonprofit group that promotes women in business, found that two of the old BofA’s top 14 officers--or 14.3%--were women, compared with none out of six for NationsBank.
However, many top-ranking men have also left the bank recently, including former Bank of America Chief Executive David Coulter, and women remain in high positions. Four of 19 directors are women. In Southern California, 23 of the top 58 consumer and commercial bankers are women, and former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown heads private banking operations.
The merger resulted in generous severance packages, giving both male and female executives incentives to leave.
NationsBank Montgomery Securities Inc., the bank’s investment banking unit, has also been undergoing a reorganization since its 57-year-old founder Thomas Weisel quit in September. More than half a dozen other male senior executives there have followed Weisel in leaving the firm.
At BofA’s San Francisco headquarters, six of the 10 women resigned after their assignments were given to NationsBank executives and several were offered lower-ranking positions with less authority, the Chronicle said, citing interviews with current and former employees.
The women spoke to the newspaper on the condition that they not be identified. Some said the terms of their severance packages prevented them from speaking publicly.
Several female employees told the newspaper they were insulted when NationsBank Chairman and Chief Executive Hugh McColl distributed a videotape to employees in which he boasted of having “the best men in banking.”
“I don’t think they had any intention of having me in a position of influence,” said one senior BofA woman who recently left the bank. “They harbor a feeling about women that they should have bumblebees on their shoulders and be playing tennis at the club.”
The new BankAmerica maintains the women left for personal reasons, not because of pressure.
“Each of the women made a decision based on a combination of personal and professional factors,” said Lorraine Stimmel, executive vice president responsible for diversity programs at the combined bank and herself a manager at the old BofA. “Many of the female executives were offered what I would consider important positions in the new company.”
The women with reduced authority had not been demoted, but hold important positions in a larger and more powerful bank, Stimmel said. Spokeswoman Melba Spencer said the few women speaking anonymously did not represent the feelings of most women at the bank.
