Citi sees the days of traders slamming phones coming to an end

Closing the gap: A woman walks past a Citibank branch in New York. Citigroup has been working to boost the share of women from assistant vice-president up through the MD level to bolster its efforts to close the pay gap between male and female employees. — AFP

NEW YORK: The days of traders slamming phones and breaking computers are becoming a thing of the past.

Such behaviour was a frequent sight when Citigroup Inc’s Deirdre Dunn got her start on Wall Street two decades ago. One colleague even kept a mini baseball bat in his desk to hammer his phone back together. Now, with banks desperate to attract diverse candidates to their hallowed trading floors, there’s far less tolerance for that kind of hard-charging attitude, she said.