City bonuses should be linked to gender balance, report to suggest

Progress on appointing more women to senior roles should be tied in to the way bonuses for City executives are awarded.

A government-commissioned review led by Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the chief executive of Virgin Money, is expected to make the recommendations.

Gender diversity

The full report is due to be delivered before next year's Budget and is expected to propose that financial firms should be made to report on gender diversity and create an executive position to be responsible for it.

The preliminary findings of the report will be released at a summit hosted by economic secretary to the Treasury Harriett Baldwin.

Ms Gadhia commented: "It should be a wake-up call to everyone in financial services that fewer women progress to senior levels than in any other industry in the UK."

Many reasons

"There are many views as to why that might be. Motherhood, remuneration, the 'old boys' network' are all mentioned, but only scratch the surface of an issue that has been hidden for too long," Ms Gadhia explained.

"My report proposes addressing the issue in a way that the City will recognise. Make it public, measure it and report on it. What gets published gets done," she added.

The new report follows another from Lord Davies, which highlighted the fact that no FTSE 100 companies now had boards only made up of men. However, his report suggested taking a voluntary approach to solving the problem of how to get more women into senior positions rather than legislate to enforce it.