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Billionaire #Buffett says women's place is in investing

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Saturday that women ought to have a higher profile in investing.


On the sidelines of the annual shareholders meeting of his Berkshire Hathaway empire in Omaha, Buffett made a surprise appearance at a gathering called Variant Perspectives, organized by a group of women financial professionals aiming to end the imbalance.

"It's long overdue," Buffet said of the goal.

"When someone calls me from the outside with an investment idea, I'm not going to ask what their sex is; it wouldn't make a difference," he added, stressing that: "The stock doesn't know who owns it."

Only three percent of investment funds in the United States are owned by women, according to Variant Perspectives.

www.france24.com
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Do women really make better investors than men?

Although fewer females are in the stockmarket, numerous studies suggest they outperform on returns


Plenty of articles have been written bemoaning the fact that women are less likely to invest in the stock market than men. However, several recent studies suggest that women who do take the plunge outperform men when it comes to investment returns.

So what is the evidence — and what exactly are female investors doing to gain the edge over men?

Warwick Business School conducted a study of 2,800 UK men and women investing with Barclays’ Smart Investor, tracking their performance over three years. Not only did the women that were examined outperform the FTSE 100 over the time period, they also achieved better returns than their male counterparts.

The men in Warwick’s study managed an average annual return 0.14 per cent higher than the FTSE 100, but women outperformed the benchmark by 1.94 per cent, beating men by 1.8 per cent.

A separate study by Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s biggest consumer investment platform, also found that women investors had the edge, returning on average 0.81 per cent more than men over a three-year period. Hargreaves points out that if this pattern were to continue for 30 years, the average woman would end up with a portfolio worth 25 per cent more than the average man.

www.ft.com
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Equal Pay Day. Here's what women can do to close the gender pay gap for good. #EqualPay #GenderPayGap

The gender pay gap is real, but it's shrinking and women have a clear path to putting it in the past once and for all.


As we reflect on Equal Pay Day today, let’s take a moment for a little bit of history: A little over 30 years ago, women earned 64 cents for every dollar a man earned — a pay gap of 36 cents. Today, we earn 80 cents, making the gap 20 cents — or about half of what it used to be. For women of color, the gap is even greater. Black women earn 63 cents for every dollar that men do, Native American women earn 58 cents and Hispanic women make just 54 cents.

(Note: You may see slightly different numbers floating around out there, and that’s because of different data sets used. For example, The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t count bonuses, while the Census Bureau does, and some calculations use hourly wages while others rely on salary. The important thing to note is that the gender pay gap is still here and it’s still big.)

But there is good news — according a 2019 report from Glassdoor Economic Research, the gender pay gap is shrinking in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and four other countries — it’s nearly 3 percent narrower today than it was three years ago.

www.nbcnews.com
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Meet The Top Women Investors Of The Midas List In 2019 #MidasList

Globally, only about 17% of investment-level positions at venture firms are held by women, according to PitchBook data this year.


Women are still a minority among the most successful venture capital investors, but their presence is growing. Twelve female investors made it onto this year’s Midas List, a record for the annual ranking and an increase from nine women a year ago. The cohort includes three female newcomers, one of whom, Kathy Xu, is the highest-ranked woman on the list.

The Midas List ranks venture capital investors based on the number and dollar size of exits and highly-valued private companies over the past five years, with a premium on bolder early-stage deals. Produced in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners, the ranking counts only exits (public offerings or acquisitions) that are over $200 million or private investment rounds valuing companies at $400 million or more.

Newcomer Kathy Xu, founder and partner at Shanghai-based firm Capital Today, joins the list at the very lofty No. 6 spot, thanks largely to her prescient bet on JD.com, China’s No. 2 online retailer, plus investments in Chinese gaming company NetEase and discount e-commerce site Meituan-Dianping. Capital Today was just a year old when Xu bet on JD.com as its only Series A investor. After the e-commerce site went public in 2015, she had a career-making win. Her $18 million check returned $2.9 billion to Capital Today and its investors. Xu began her career as a bank clerk in China, then worked at Hong Kong investment firm Peregrine and Baring Private Equity Asia before founding Capital Today in 2005.

www.forbes.com
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Enough mansplaining: women tackle gender investment gap #genderinvestmentgap

"It's important you have somebody across the table you can relate to," summed up Janet Cowell, CEO of Girls Who Invest.


As a professional woman in her late 30s, Kate Packard was keen to start investing. Like many novices, her enthusiasm took a knock when she hit a wall of impenetrable jargon -- and was all but killed off by "mansplaining" from the men around her.

"They'll be like, 'Money is green! And it's paper!'" said the strategic communications manager from Sterling, Virginia. "Yes, thanks, I can get there on my own."

To do so, the 38-year-old turned to one of a growing number of groups run by women, for women -- to help bridge the gender gap when it comes to investment.

Women are significantly less likely to invest in the market than men: based on studies from 2016 and 2017, the micro-investing app Acorns found 57 percent of women don't invest at all, versus 44 percent of men.

Over a lifetime, that can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income -- and can hit particularly hard in countries like the United States, where wise investment can make the difference between hardship and comfort in retirement.

www.dailymail.co.uk
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Elvie raises $42M to become the go-to destination for women’s health

Under Boler’s fearless leadership, Elvie has raised nearly $50 million and started a much-needed conversation around women’s issues, like pelvic floor health and public breastfeeding.


Elvie, the developer of femtech hardware including a silent wearable breast pump and a smart pelvic floor exerciser, is one of the boldest startups around.

Led by co-founder and chief executive officer Tania Boler, the London-based business has successfully infiltrated the bro-y community of venture capitalists, which has historically shied away from the “unrelatable” and “niche” sector that is women’s health. Of course, that sector isn’t niche at all, the global women’s health market is expected to be worth $51.3 billion by 2025, but investors have only recently begun to accept that reality.

Elvie is today announcing its third private financing, a $42 million Series B led by IPGL to support the release of four additional women’s health products. Octopus Ventures and Impact Ventures U.K. have also participated in the round.

Six-year-old Elvie is led by Boler and co-founder Alexander Asseily, a hardware vet and co-founder of the consumer electronics business Jawbone, which despite its many struggles, managed to get VCs to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars before it folded. Boler’s expertise in the space — she has a Ph.D. in sexual health — and Asseily’s hardware prowess have undoubtedly lured investors, as has Elvie’s breast pump, launched in September, which boasts a waitlist of thousands of women.

www.techcrunch.com
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Investment bank Goldman Sachs wants half of its entry-level recruits to be women #GoldmanSachs

The bank is expanding its goal of 50 percent female recruitment in the analysts it picks from college campuses. It will now include in that goal people hired laterally into entry-level jobs.


Goldman Sachs said it is boosting its efforts to improve diversity at the storied investment bank, setting goals for the first time for hiring black and Latino associates and saying it will tie top leaders' pay and promotions to their progress on those goals.

In a memo to employees Monday, CEO David Solomon said the bank was expanding a year-old goal of 50 percent female recruitment in the crop of analysts it picks from college campuses each year. It will now include in that goal people hired laterally into entry-level jobs and set goals for several diverse groups.

In addition to having women make up half of all incoming Goldman analysts and entry-level associates — representing 70 percent of the bank's annual hiring — the bank aims to have 11 percent of those recruits be black and 14 percent be Hispanic/Latino in the Americas.

Goldman also announced new steps to address diversity within its more senior ranks, a move that comes within weeks of the deadline to report on its gender pay gap in Britain. Last year, Goldman reported that the average hourly rate for its female employees in the United Kingdom was 55.5 percent lower than the rate for men. The median hourly rate was 36.4 percent lower for women.

www.chicagotribune.com
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UBS says NASA's all-women spacewalk is a 'giant leap' with 'significant investment implications'

"NASA will make history with the first all-women spacewalk this month," UBS told investors. The event amplifies the messages of both space exploration and gender equality, UBS added, which "are both likely to have significant investment implications."


At the end of March a team of five women will break barriers in space, an event investment bank UBS thinks is more than symbolic: It's pivotal to investors.

"NASA will make history with the first all-women spacewalk this month," UBS said in a note to investors on Monday titled "one giant leap for woman-kind." The event amplifies the messages of both space exploration and gender equality, UBS added, which "are both likely to have significant investment implications."

UBS pointed to research that gender equality "will have major economic implications," the bank said. Narrowing the gap between the percentage of men and women participating in the global labor force could add $12 trillion to the world's GDP in the next six years, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Additionally, UBS found that companies where women make up at least 20 percent of either the board of directors or senior management "were more profitable than their less gender diverse peers on several metrics," the firm said.

www.cnbc.com
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UBS is ignoring its own advice on women’s rights

Using maternity leave to cut female managers’ bonuses is hardly the way to gender equality


On International Women’s Day on Friday, one company signalling that the financial services industry needed to do more for gender equality was UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank. Making its point, it devoted prominent space on its website to senior female managers airing their expertise on financial markets. All the more awkward, then, was Monday’s disclosure by this newspaper that a number of top UBS female employees had criticised the bank for using their maternity leave to impose long-term cuts on their bonuses.

More than a dozen women in the bank’s Swiss wealth management unit cited the treatment they had suffered, which in many cases saw their bonuses cut by a nearly a third or more. They had complained more than a year ago, but continued to be affected. Some had resigned in frustration.

The female employees had also been subjected to patronising comments from managers that are entirely out of keeping with the modern financial — or indeed any — workplace. As an explanation for her bonus cut, one was told that she had made the “lifestyle choice” of being a working mother. Another, when protesting about a lower bonus, was told to “focus on her baby”. Their situation contrasts sharply with Swiss male employees who take several weeks’ annual leave for obligatory military service and suffer no bonus cuts.

Apart from being totally unfair, the case amounts to dismal public relations for a global bank. While it appears to affect women employed only in Switzerland, it can only be demoralising for women employed by UBS throughout the world to know that its home base operates in such a fashion. 

www.ft.com
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UK investor body to apply red warning if a company's board lacks women #womenonboards

At the highest chief executive level, a study released in 2018 on International Women’s Day found women CEOs in the FTSE 100 were outnumbered by chiefs called David.


LONDON - Britain’s top companies face a red warning if they don’t have more than one woman on their board, the Investment Association said on Thursday, adding to pressure for more female representation at top levels of management.

The body which represents big asset managers said it was expanding its traffic light system which guides big investors on whether a company is complying with best practice in areas of governance such as executive pay.

The IA said it would apply a red alert to a top 350 listed company if there are none or only one woman on the board.

Ratings on all aspects of a company’s governance are done three weeks before its annual shareholders’ meeting. Currently there are no red tops related to the number of women on boards, but some are expected, an IA spokesman said, without giving any further detail.

www.reuters.com
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Narrowing Gender Pay and Power Gaps Could Boost Growth, Markets

Higher pay for women and more executive positions could give markets the jolt they need, studies find.


In commemoration of Women’s History Month in March and International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8, a number of financial organizations are focusing on the actual and potential power of women in the economy and financial markets. Narrowing the gap between the two would not only boost U.S. and global growth but also increase gains in U.S. and global stock markets.

S&P Global found that increasing the participation of women in the U.S. workforce to match the rate in other advanced economies — the U.S. placed 13 among top OECD countries, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the World Bank — U.S. GDP could potentially increase 0.2 percentage points annually, which would boost S&P 500 growth by 0.7% per year.

After 10 years that could yield a $2.87 trillion increase in market capitalization in the U.S. and $5.87 trillion increase in capitalization of global markets, according to S&P Global, which notes that stronger growth in the U.S. boosts market growth abroad. The increases, however, vary by country, according to S&P Global.

The World Economic Forum in 2017 said that closing the economic gender gap across countries by 2025 could increase global GDP by $5.3 trillion; Merrill, citing McKinsey & Co., says the increase could be several times that, $12 trillion to $28 trillion, which translates into 13% to 31% faster GDP growth.

www.thinkadvisor.com
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UK best in Europe for female chiefs - but women still account for barely one in 20 bosses

Companies face intense pressure to hire more women in senior jobs. Despite this only 6pc of British CEOs are women.


Britain has the highest proportion of female bosses of all major European economies, coming ahead of Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Nevertheless, there are still very few women running companies.

Just 6pc of British businesses have a female chief executive or managing director, a Daily Telegraph analysis of S&P Capital IQ data has found.

That means barely one-in-20 bosses is a woman, even after major campaigns from businesses and politicians.

It also indicates progress has been no better at the top than at the bottom of Britain’s business hierarchy - just seven of the FTSE 100 chief executives are female.

France is close behind with 5.7pc of bosses being women, followed by Italy’s 3.7pc and...

www.telegraph.co.uk
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Billion Dollar Fund for Women comes to Canada to sign up more VCs #BillionDollarFund

Rementilla is working with a network of regional leads to introduce Billion Dollar Fund to Canada’s venture industry.


Billion Dollar Fund for Women, a global initiative that aims to increase investment in women-founded companies, has arrived in Canada to recruit local venture firms.

The launch was announced today by Lally Rementilla, the fund’s Canada lead and president of Quantius, a Toronto intellectual-property lender and one of the fund’s early supporters.

Rementilla told PE Hub Canada that the fund is looking to spread awareness in Canada about the gender financing gap.

It also offers a plan of action involving pledges by VC firms to invest a portion of their capital in tech startups created by female entrepreneurs.

Established in 2018 at the annual meetings of the IMF/World Bank, Billion Dollar Fund asks for pledges from VC firms, typically ranging $1 million to $100 million, with the goal of reaching US$1 billion in all.

www.pehub.com
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Gender Bias Contributes to Blocking Female Founders Out of Investment & Venture Capital. We Need to Fix This.

The world of business equity raising is still dominated by men


Melinda Gates wrote in ReCode back in 2017: “We like to think that venture capital is driven by the power of good ideas. But by the numbers, it’s men who have the keys.”

Gates argued that this was “more to do with historical inequalities than it does with innate ability.”

At the time of Gates’ comments, a U.S. analysis found that just 2% of venture capital finance went to start-ups founded by women, and with women comprising just 9% of the decision-makers at U.S. venture capital firms, the lack of female VC representation seemed a compelling reason as to why. The situation a year on shows no sign of improving.

Recently, a UK VC & Female Founders report for the Treasury discovered that for every £1 of VC investment, all-female founder teams get less than 1p.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss said it was “incredible” that in 2019 men had a “virtual monopoly on venture capital.”

Even within the more disruptive, and arguably progressive, realms of crowdfunding, women are underrepresented – Crowdcube found that only 18% of their funded pitches are led by females or a joint team which includes a female.

www.crowdfundinsider.com
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The median gender pay gap - It’s time to tell the whole story #mediangenderpaygap

Arjuna Capital is announcing an important new phase of their work: a median pay gap shareholder resolution engaging a dozen major US companies across the banking, tech, and retail sectors.


There are gender pay gaps … and then there are median gender pay gaps. Understanding the difference between the two may determine just how much progress women make in terms of fairer compensation in the next decade.

So first, the definitions:

“Equal pay” gap: What women are paid versus their direct male peers, statistically adjusted for factors such as job, seniority, and geography. Often referred to in the context of “equal pay for equal work.”

“Median pay” gap: The median pay of women working full time versus men working full time. This is an unadjusted raw measure used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Women in the US, for example, make 80 cents on the dollar versus men on this basis.

Equal pay gaps measure whether women are being paid commensurate with their peers for the work they are doing today. But median pay gaps measure whether or not women are holding as many high-paying jobs as men. Narrowing the median pay gap means putting more women in leadership (and reaping the performance benefits that diversity affords). And that’s where investors come in. Concerned shareholders in major US financial and tech companies want to make sure the pay gap difference is understood—and acted upon.

www.qz.com
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Research: When Gender Diversity Makes Firms More Productive #genderdiversity

When you value diversity, you encourage diverse idea exchange.


The business world has long debated the effect of gender diversity on business outcomes. Does diversity make a company more productive?

Many say yes. Some researchers argue that gender diversity leads to more innovative thinking and signals to investors that a company is competently run. Others say no. Conflicting research indicates that gender diversity can sometimes harm firm performance.

But most research has looked at this question within a single country or industry. As a result, their findings are likely limited to that country or industry. This got us thinking: Could the conflicting research be due to differences in context? Region and industry might affect people’s opinions of gender diversity, and this might then affect whether or not diversity leads to stronger outcomes.

In research one of us (Professor Zhang) conducted, this is exactly what was found. In a study of 1,069 leading firms across 35 countries and 24 industries, we found that gender diversity relates to more productive companies, as measured by market value and revenue, only in contexts where gender diversity is viewed as “normatively” accepted. By normative acceptance, we mean a widespread cultural belief that gender diversity is important.

www.hbr.org
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Bias, networking fears: Women want to drive change in India's male-dominated VC industry

What do Women Investors & Entrepreneurs want?


When Harsha Kumar joined Lightspeed Ventures after a career in product management, things were different. Unlike working in a fast-growing startup like Ola, where big leaps could be made in a matter of days, in venture capital the output of her work would take years to show up. In the absence of past performance to fall back on, Harsha realised that she would have to find a way to break into this male-dominated industry.

“As a VC, the people you interact with are mostly external to the fund and don’t work with you on a daily basis. They have never seen you perform; so, when you meet someone for the first time, you can sense that there is scepticism, you notice the bias.” she said. “I have been in meetings where the person would rather talk to a man who is my junior than look at me in the eye and talk to me. It takes some practice to move past it and make yourself heard.”

Kumar’s story is similar to multiple female investors that ET spoke to. Some said they found networking intimidating or awkward in the absence of supportive platforms while others said they struggled with getting their voices heard in the presence of men.

economictimes.indiatimes.com.com
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Mary Ellen Iskenderian, CEO Of Women's World Banking, On The Future Of Impact Investing #ImpactInvesting

“Are you serving women?” -Mary Ellen Iskenderian


As President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, Mary Ellen Iskenderian is passionate about bringing impactful financial services offerings to women across the globe. Throughout her early career in investment banking and financial services, Iskenderian says that questions like, “How many women are you serving?” and “Are women getting loans at the same size as men?” were never really asked - something that, through her work with WWB, she’s working to change.

Iskenderian started her career at Lehman Brothers, but soon realized that the role she was playing there didn’t allow her to make the kind of positive impact that she wanted to be able to through her finance career. Iskenderian was later accepted into the World Bank’s Young Professionals Program, where, during her time there, world events changed the path of her career forever. The Berlin Wall fell, and the World Bank was tasked with helping to rebuild public and private financial institutions. Iskenderian spent the next eight years working on stock exchanges, securities regulators, reclaiming financial systems, and largely serving as an advisor to Eastern Europeans companies in need of direction at that time. She also worked on the first IPO that was done on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (housed in the former KGB headquarters in Warsaw), which she calls “an extraordinary opportunity and an amazing moment in history.”

www.forbes.com
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The Pitch Deck Scandal

Female-founded businesses got a wake up call this week - and it wasn't pretty


When I first read the UK VC & Female Founders report* earlier this week, I was stunned into silence. Actually, I’m sure I gasped out loud then fell into silent disbelief. The report is devastating and shines a great big light onto the gender bias and inequality that exists in the venture capital (VC) world for female founder businesses.

Key findings

  • for every £1 of venture capital (VC) investment in the UK, all-female founder teams get less than 1p, all-male founder teams get 89p, and mixed-gender teams 10p.
  • venture capital investment in start-ups with female founders is increasing but progress is very slow. At current rates, for all-female teams to reach even 10% of all deals will take more than 25 years (until 2045).
  • 83% of deals that UK VCs made last year had no women at all on the founding teams.
I have spent the past 23 years navigating the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds, working and engaging with women in business teams and initiatives, joining women-led networking groups, facilitating women-focused events, supporting the #WeForShe movement at every opportunity, volunteering at women-at-work NGOs, sitting on the executive team / Board of female-centric networking associations, mentoring peers, supporting less-experienced women in my field and across other industries, contributing to online and in-person forums, and just last week – speaking on a panel at a women-centric conference. I run a business that works solely with a female client base. I am a born advocate of women.

www.thriveglobal.com
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Making the most of the US 'umbrella initiative' for women's empowerment

“The administration’s initiative can only serve as an effective complement to the WEEE Act if it brings new resources to the table.”


Today, the U.S. administration is launching a long-anticipated, inter-agency “umbrella initiative” designed to advance women’s economic empowerment globally. This could be an important opportunity for advancing gender equality in U.S. foreign policy. The government has already addressed other issues seen as important for equality, such as gender-based violence, girls’ empowerment and women’s experience of war and peace. However, this will be the first time the U.S. government articulates a comprehensive approach for U.S. foreign policy and assistance to help women take control of their economic independence.

The Coalition for Women’s Economic Empowerment and Equality — a D.C.-based group of international development organizations committed to this critical issue — recognizes that this interagency U.S. government commitment comes at a critical moment. CWEEE hopes that this new initiative will help address the complex needs faced by women, communities, and businesses around the world. Women’s economic empowerment requires more than just increasing their economic participation and advancement. It also includes women’s ability to make meaningful economic decisions, own and control assets, mitigate risks such as the threat of gender-based violence, and have an enabling environment — including laws, education, comprehensive health care, and child or elder care — that supports their empowerment.

www.devex.com
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