Top women in banking are not like men. Here's how
Banking might be less of an old boy’s club than it used to be, and in one important way it’s still that: there are a lot of boys at the top, and they’re frightfully old. The women, however, are not. Or less old, at least.
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Figures from MergerLinks by Datasite, the market intelligence provider, revealed the world’s top M&A dealmakers for 2024, based on total deal value supervised. For the first time ever, a woman topped the ranking – JPMorgan’s global head of M&A, Anu Aiyengar, who advised on $83.2bn in deal value across the year. Off the mountain peak, however, the world’s top male and female dealmakers differ in quite a few ways.
Male bankers are more senior than female ones
For one, the men on the list are much, much more senior than the women. Of the top ten female dealmakers in North America, only one – PJT Partners’ Jessica Kearns – started her career before 1990. The majority started after 2000.
The men on the list are longer in the tooth. George Boutros, CEO of Qatalyst Partners, started with Morgan Stanley in 1986. Goldman Sachs’ co-chair of global M&A, Timothy Ingrassia, joined the firm in 1986. Chris Ventresca, JPMorgan’s global co-chair of M&A, joined the firm in 1988. The men have been around.
The top female bankers seem a new phenomenon. This might reflect diversity targets that were only imposed in the past decade and are - in any case - not always reached. Barclays, for example, had a goal to have 33% of MDs be women by the end of 2025, but it seems to have stalled at 30%.
Women had more “specialist” roles
On the men’s list, only two entries were sector heads – Xafier Loriferne, JPMorgan’s head of FIG M&A, and Suhail Sikhtian, Goldman’s global co-head of global energy. The rest were global heads or chairs of M&A more broadly.
The top female bankers, however, are more specialized. Morgan Stanley’s Robyn Maslynsky leads the firm’s insurance service business. Goldman Sachs’ Aimee Mungovan is an industrials banker. Centerview Partner Gayle Turk is also focused on industrials banking.
In fact, there were only two global heads on the women’s list: JPMorgan’s global head of M&A, Anu Aiyengar, and Goldman Sachs global co-head of investment banking, Kim Posnett.
Male bankers (and Americans) are more loyal to their employers than women
As a whole, it seems senior women in banking have less experience in their roles than men, especially in Europe.
The top 10 male dealmakers on the list had spent an average of 23 years with their employers. For female bankers in North America, it was 16 years; and for female dealmakers in EMEA, it was 14 years.
Male dealmakers loyalty was skewed by the very very long tenures of Goldman Sach’s Timothy Ingrassia and JPMorgan’s Chris Ventresca. Discounting their 39 and 37 years tenures still offers an average of 19 years for male dealmakers.
By comparison, the most tenured woman in North America or EMEA was Morgan Stanley’s Melissa Godoy, who joined the firm in 2000. There were no women on either list who had been with their current employer since the 20th century, but the men’s list had four. Godoy only became an MD in 2021, to boot.
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