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- The financial-services industry has tried to clean up its image in recent years, but shades of an earlier era on Wall Street have lingered at the firm BTIG, a Business Insider investigation has found.
- Interviews with more than half a dozen former BTIG employees, and a review of court records and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission documents, reveal allegations of a boys'-club culture, excessive drinking at company events, and sexual banter at least into 2019.
- An investigator with the EEOC contacted at least two former BTIG employees within the past 18 months seeking information about allegations of sexual harassment at the firm.
- In an ongoing lawsuit filed in 2019, one former employee alleged that an executive in the firm's San Francisco office directed BTIG staff to screen out job candidates that "looked black," and to avoid female job applicants since it was "too risky to hire a woman." The executive apparently remained at BTIG until June of this year, when Business Insider inquired about the lawsuit. BTIG says he is no longer with the firm.
- BTIG said: "We are proud of the firm we have built and are committed to continually improving it," adding that "allegations of inappropriate behavior are investigated and appropriate disciplinary action is taken consistent with company policy and in accordance with applicable laws." The company also said it "strongly rejects the claims that are currently the subject of litigation."
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In December, the financial-services firm BTIG made a surprise announcement: The company would no longer serve alcohol at its winter holiday party, which had gained a reputation on Wall Street as an annual anything-goes affair.
Instead, the company said, it would opt for healthier alternatives such as smoothies and fruit-infused water, offering activities like yoga and bootcamp-style workouts.
"I'm sore, just in a different way," a BTIG employee joked to Reuters at the time. "My head doesn't hurt; my body hurts."
As a new generation of finance professionals enters the workforce, the financial industry has struggled to convince the public that it now embraces groups that Wall Street has long excluded. For BTIG, rebranding its holiday party with a more wholesome touch — it had been a raucous, lavish event for employees and clients held at swanky New York nightclubs like Catch and Provocateur — was an attempt to do just that.
But as the firm, which is privately held with main offices in New York and San Francisco, attempts to tweak its image outwardly, some of the old Wall Street ways persisted internally in recent years, Business Insider has learned.
Interviews with more than half a dozen employees who left the firm within the past six years, as well as a review of court records and documents from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, revealed allegations of a boys'-club culture marked by conduct that some described as inappropriate workplace behavior, excessive drinking at company events, and sexual banter.
In an ongoing lawsuit in California, one former employee alleged an executive in the firm's San Francisco office directed BTIG staff to screen out job candidates that "looked black" or "sounded black," and to avoid female job applicants since it was "too risky to hire a woman."
The executive, Gene Ramirez, appears to have continued in his role at BTIG for a year after the complaint was filed, until after Business Insider made inquiries this month. BTIG now says he is no longer with the firm.
An investigator for the EEOC contacted at least two former BTIG employees in the past 18 months seeking information about allegations of sexual harassment involving the financial-services firm, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider.
Likewise, Business Insider has learned that a California employment law firm reached out to former employees more than a year ago in an apparent effort to sign up clients to bring a civil-rights claim against the company. The law firm did not file any claims against BTIG.
"When I got that letter in the mail, there was a part of me that was glad in the sense that people actually came forward, and something was filed and [there] were hopefully steps made in the right direction to stop a lot of the behavior that was going on," one former BTIG employee, who left the firm in 2018 after several years of employment and received a mailed inquiry from the EEOC, told Business Insider.
In a statement a BTIG spokesperson said:
"We are proud of the firm we have built and are committed to continually improving it. There is more work to be done across the financial services industry and at our firm to address representation at all levels. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and recognize that we can do more, and we are doing more, to achieve these goals. To that end, we have taken a number of steps recently, including offering internships, providing early career opportunities, and forming an Inclusive Action Council, to build a more gender and racially diverse talent pipeline.
"It is extremely troubling to us to hear that anonymous former employees described inappropriate behavior during their time at BTIG. BTIG has clear anti-discrimination, anti-harassment, and non-retaliation policies in place. We condemn racial, prejudicial or sexist comments of any kind. While we do not comment on specific personnel matters, allegations of inappropriate behavior are investigated and appropriate disciplinary action is taken consistent with company policy and in accordance with applicable laws. BTIG strongly rejects the claims that are currently the subject of litigation. We are confident the claims lack merit and will be resolved accordingly."
'It felt like old-school Wall Street'
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BTIG was formed in 2005 out of a merger between the firms Baypoint Trading, founded by Scott Kovalik, and Bass Trading, founded by Steven Starker.
Kovalik, now BTIG's chief executive, and Starker, whose title at the firm is cofounder, both started on Wall Street in 1987, Kovalik at the storied investment bank Salomon Brothers — "home to the famously rapacious and churlish,"The Wall Street Journal once wrote — and Starker at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, the once powerful trading shop Goldman Sachs bought in 2000.
Today, BTIG has some 3,000 institutional and corporate clients with 600 employees in 18 offices. Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, the private-equity giant, are among the firm's investors.
A spokesperson for Blackstone described its funds' stake in BTIG as relatively small, adding that Blackstone is not a controlling investor. A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Several former employees said the brokerage firm had few female traders. Unlike some other Wall Street firms, which have taken steps to change their ways in the wake of the #MeToo movement, BTIG seemed mired in the past, these former employees say.
Three former employees who left the company within the past three years told Business Insider the firm reminded them of trading floors of the 1980s.
The human-resources department was toothless and rarely called on to intervene on behalf of staffers, even in cases when employees raised complaints directly to senior leaders, two people said.
"What you have at BTIG is a bunch of vultures trying to steal each other's lunch money and very much a bully culture, and that bully culture came from the top," a former employee in the firm's San Francisco office who left the company within the past three years said, adding that the company's "dinosaur business model"— trading stocks, bonds, and other securities for clients, even as fees from making trades have plummeted — contributed to the high-stress environment.
"It felt like old-school Wall Street to a certain extent," another former employee who left in 2018 told Business Insider. "For a lot of women, it wasn't the most comfortable environment. We liked to have fun, it was a party culture ... Since we are privately owned, we can get away with stuff that other firms can't get away with. The very senior people — they're the ones who are creating this culture."
Taking out female recruits to 'see how well they could hold their alcohol'
The former employee who left the firm's San Francisco office in the past three years said that within his group women were rarely hired. Between roughly 2014 and 2018, just two of about 40 interns brought on were women, the person said.
"It was like walking into a time warp," that person said about the company's culture. "That whole place, it's bizarre. I would say it was certainly gender very non-diverse," adding: "I don't think there was a single LGBTQ, non-binary person in that entire firm."
A former employee in New York who left the company in 2014 said many of the firm's receptionists were "young, cute girls in tight clothing."
Another former employee in New York who was at the company through 2018 said that after a female staffer was hired, workers circulated a poll about which male would be the first to approach the "beautiful" new arrival.
"It wasn't every single person there, but there were a few key people who made it extremely toxic, which is sort of the reason I left," said a former employee who worked at BTIG until 2017.
In a statement, the BTIG spokesperson pointed to several senior female executive at the firm, including its chief operating officer, head of human resources, and head of global trading operations, adding that the firm's "receptionists in New York and San Francisco are professional, respected employees who have been working at the firm for several years and employed in the business world for 20+ years each."
Between 2014 and 2018 — the period during which the former employee in the San Francisco office said his group hired just two female interns out of 40 — the company as a whole hired 21 female interns out of 188, or 11%, the spokeswoman said. In San Francisco, the spokeswoman said, the firm hired six female interns out of a total of 37. Interns usually rotate throughout different departments during their internships.
The spokesperson also said "BTIG has LGBTQ+ employees," but declined to identify any or say whether the company has an affinity group for LGBTQ+ employees. Overall, the spokesperson said, BTIG has "more than 54 women in client facing (trading/sales) roles," though she declined to say how many men were employed in comparable roles.
One former employee who worked in New York recalled that, sometime between 2011 and 2013, the firm was staffing up its capital introduction team, which is tasked with building relationships with hedge funds and investors.
Peter Tarrant, the head of business development and capital introduction, and Jennifer Bloom, a managing director and cohead of US capital introduction, took out prospective female recruits "to see how well they could hold their alcohol," this former employee said.
Neither Bloom nor Tarrant responded to requests for comment.
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That person added that staffers would often gossip about Starker's lavish lifestyle. "Steven Starker was the main partner in New York City and he was a character," this person said. "He made at least $100 million dollars."
In 2016 he listed for sale a $16.8 million house in Purchase, New York, complete with a pool, turf soccer field, tennis court, basketball court, batting cage, and chipping green, according to The Wall Street Journal. He told the paper he'd looked at 36 houses before settling on the property.
A year earlier, billionaire equity and investment fund manager Antony Ressler's group, which includes Starker, purchased the Atlanta Hawks franchise for $850 million.
'A lawsuit waiting to happen'
Four former employees who all left the firm within the past six years said that BTIG lacked diversity during their time there, though one said there was a "dearth of Black people in our industry as a whole, so that's always a problem in finance."
The person at BTIG until 2017 said: "It was not an objective to have a diverse population, and they did not seek out to elevate women or support women, or even people of color. It was not that kind of culture, and it was not that kind of firm," adding: "It was not a productive environment for women or people of color."
"You walked in there, and it was a very white firm, and I was, like, 'Oh my gosh, what era did this come out of?'" she said.
The former employee who left the firm's San Francisco office within the past three years described a workplace-sensitivity training session led by an outside consultant that took place four or five years ago.
During the session, one employee directed a racial slur at another employee in an attempt at humor, the former staffer recalled.
"You are all a lawsuit waiting to happen," the facilitator told the group.
In its statement, BTIG said the company regularly provides "workplace sensitivity and sexual harassment training sessions" but is "not aware of any incident from 4-5 years ago in which anything inappropriate occurred during any such session that was not part of the course and instructor program."
'Too much dirt to keep it clean'
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One former employee who worked in New York until 2018 cited what she described as unprofessional conduct from coworkers, including flirtatious behavior, office romances, and risqué dancing at company events.
She believed that some female employees at BTIG who dated coworkers were singled out for special treatment. Some women "dated to get to the top to be favorable," the person told Business Insider.
The same former employee said she saw a white employee call an African American employee "stupid" in front of colleagues. The insulted employee told her, she said, that when he reported the incident to his manager, the manager took no action and simply told him to go to HR.
"Not everyone at the company was horrible," the former employee said. "There were some genuinely good people and good workers, but unfortunately there was too much dirt to keep it clean. My experience was not a great one, and I'm sure people probably felt the same way. It's a very high-pressure environment, and you can't work under those amounts of stress."
'Not your typical holiday party'
While alcohol is no longer served at BTIG's winter holiday party, sources who attended the holiday bash before 2019 described a club-like atmosphere that included provocative dancing, unlimited booze, and, one attendee said, caged women as entertainment one year. Through an attorney, BTIG denied that there were ever caged women at its parties.
"At the Christmas party, the first rule is you can't talk about the Christmas party," the former employee who was at the New York office until 2014 told Business Insider. "It was at a club, there were dancers, everybody had a good time."
A former employee at the company from 2014 until 2018 described scant food, free-flowing alcohol, and senior managers roaming the dance floor. Later in the evening, it was common for clients to come and join in, this person added.
"When I got there I was thinking more of a corporate kind of event, but some girls would dress in really provocative attire like see-through dresses, tight skirts, club-wear basically, and not a corporate environment," said another former employee about the 2017 bash. She said she felt uncomfortable at the event.
The former employee added: "You had people in each other's faces, you had people dancing kind of really, really close and provocative. It was just not your typical holiday party. It was more like what you would expect if going to a club."
When asked why BTIG discontinued alcohol in 2019, the firm told Business Insider: "For BTIG's 2019 holiday party in New York, the firm choose to take advantage of some entertainment space at its new building. The party was consistent with events the firm held in other locations previously, focusing on wellness, social team-building and inclusivity."
Charity Day
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The holiday party wasn't the only thing BTIG has changed about itself in recent years. The company also cancelled its long-standing annual Charity Day event for two years in a row, a fund-raising drive that in previous years drew supermodels, elite athletes, and politicians to the BTIG offices to raise money for charity.
The last event, carried by CNBC and covered by Business Insider, was held in 2018.
In past years, models including Petra Němcová, Molly Sims, and Chrissy Teigen, and politicians such as Mike Bloomberg and Bill Clinton, have walked the trading floor, posing for photos with BTIG leaders. There have also been appearances from Miss Teen USA, Miss USA, and Miss Universe winners. In photos, Starker can be seen posing with famous women, including Kristin Davis, Bridget Moynahan, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, and Jenny McCarthy.
The event has generated more than $50 million for "hundreds" of charitable organizations, according to the firm's website.
"We started BTIG Charity Day in 2004, when the firm had less than 20 employees. From that first year on it has been the one day a year where all of our employees look forward to coming together to give back to others in need," Starker told Forbes in a 2016 interview. "The celebrities that participate in BTIG Charity Day are truly incredible, and on BTIG Charity Day we see them as an extension of our team. Their response is remarkable, and they often return year after year."
But BTIG appears to have thought better of the optics of bringing celebrities and models onto the trading floor, some of them scantily clad, to cavort with BTIG employees. Although BTIG declined to say whether the event has been permanently cancelled, it said the 2019 Charity Day was "originally postponed due to the New York office moving to a new location" and never rescheduled, and that the 2020 Charity Day "was postponed due to Covid-19, and at this time it seems unlikely to be rescheduled in 2020."
A person familiar with the event said the 2020 Charity Day had been considered unlikely to occur this year even before the novel coronavirus upended the events industry.
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Business Insider spoke with some sources who recounted glowing experiences at BTIG. Two former employees who worked in the San Francisco office emphasized that they had ample room to move up in the company, with valuable mentorship opportunities.
"There are more women on that trading floor than I see in a lot of other places, to be fair," a former employee from the New York office said. She said that while BTIG was a very old-school firm, its treatment of women didn't rise to the level of harassment.
"[The women] could hold their own, and they had to," she said. "They had to fight."
An EEOC investigation
But that fighting may have been what drew the attention of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider.
An EEOC investigator sent notices to at least two former BTIG employees in March 2019, seeking information about the company's environment. The letters said that the agency was "conducting an investigation into sexual harassment allegations involving BTIG, LLC" and the recipients "may have information" about the investigation.
Both former employees who received those letters said that they subsequently attempted to contact the EEOC investigator to provide information, but that neither the investigator nor anyone else from the agency returned their calls.
"I called and never heard back from the investigator — and I tried calling a couple times since," one former employee said. "So I don't know what the status of that is."
The investigator who sent the letters retired from the agency because of illness two months after sending them, two sources with knowledge of the EEOC's New York office told Business Insider. He has since died.
It appears that when the investigator retired, the agency's investigation into BTIG went on ice.
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"Under federal law, possible charges (complaints) made to the EEOC are strictly confidential, and we are prohibited from commenting on them, furnishing any information on them, or even confirming or denying the existence of such a charge," a spokesperson for the EEOC said.
Gillian Thomas, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project, told Business Insider that with the increased workload in the past couple of years because of the #MeToo movement and chronic funding and staffing problems, it's possible an EEOC investigation might fall through the cracks.
"For the agency to be able to fulfill its statutory mandate as the federal entity charged with enforcing our nation's antidiscrimination laws, it needs to have sufficient resources and personnel to follow up when people are willing to come forward and tell their stories," Thomas said. "We need to be sure the agency has the resources so those kinds of voices can be heard."
Joshua Parkhurst, an employment lawyer in New York, agreed.
"They don't have the ability to comprehensively investigate all the charges that they investigate, and it's a problem," he said.
A California law firm looked for claims of 'alleged sexual harassment'
Charon Law, a law firm in Redwood City, California, also contacted two former BTIG employees about "alleged sexual harassment" at the firm in early 2019, according to correspondence reviewed by Business Insider.
"You may have the right to recover damages for alleged sexual harassment if you worked at any time as an employee, contractor or vendor for BTIG," Perry Segal, Charon's lead attorney, wrote in a letter sent via a LinkedIn message and email to the two former employees in March 2019.
The letter did not contain any detailed allegations of misconduct, and Business Insider could not determine whether Charon Law had a basis for telling potential clients that they could recover damages from BTIG.
A former employee who received Segal's email told Business Insider that she replied to the inquiry and was told his firm was pursuing an investigation into the company.
But BTIG took a proactive approach to heading off that effort, Business Insider has learned.
Charon Law, which is affiliated with New York employment law firm Leeds Brown Law, agreed to stop its inquiries in May 2019, after BTIG's general counsel, Steve Druskin, sent a cease-and-desist demand to Leeds Brown. Segal did not respond to requests for comment.
Jeffrey Brown, a partner with Leeds Brown, said in a phone call that he did not recall receiving any letter from BTIG and declined to answer further questions. Neither Charon Law nor Leeds Brown ever brought a lawsuit against BTIG.
BTIG has taken a similarly aggressive approach to journalists looking into its culture and workplace. In the course of reporting this story, Business Insider received multiple letters from the law firm Clare Locke LLP on behalf of BTIG, which accused reporters of making "false and damaging written and oral statements" while seeking information about BTIG, and threatening to sue Business Insider for defamation and potentially damaging the firm's relationships with clients.
'Too risky to hire a woman'
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Charon Law agreed to stop investigating BTIG, but the firm continues to face legal trouble in California.
According to a suit filed by a Matthew McLeod, a former investment banker in BTIG's San Francisco office, managing director Gene Ramirez subjected coworkers to anti-Semitic, sexist, and racist comments about clients, colleagues, and prospective hires.
Among the allegations in the complaint, filed in San Francisco Superior Court in June 2019:
- The complaint accuses Ramirez of making anti-Semitic comments regarding a key client during a conference call hosted by BTIG. The complaint alleges Ramirez put the speaker phone on mute and yelled, "DANIEL? DAA-ANIEL? THIS IS BETSY COHEN! DO YOU HAVE ANY GEFILTE FISH DAAANIEL? I LOOVE ME SOME MATZAH BALL SOUP… DANIEL!"
- The complaint says Ramirez directed BTIG staff to screen out female job applicants because he thought it was "too risky to hire a woman" and "we don't need a lawsuit."
- It says Ramirez referred to another BTIG managing director, who is African American, as an "Oreo."
- It says Ramirez directed BTIG staff to screen out candidate résumés that "looked black" based on names and affiliations, or candidates that "sounded black" on the phone.
- "BTIG has deployed unlawful business practices," the complaint says, "including, but not limited to: allowing its executives to use different purported titles when dealing with different potential or actual clients; having unlicensed personnel conduct investment banking business; and failing to maintain adequate information barriers relating to confidential client and transaction information."
When McLeod raised concerns directly to BTIG's chief executive, Kovalik, and chief operating officer Matthew Clark, in May 2018, the company did not investigate the issue, according to the complaint.
Instead, McLeod said, in a meeting related to the allegations against Ramirez, Kovalik asked, "So what's this about [Ramirez] saying bad stuff about Jewish people?"
While Clark told McLeod he would provide the complaint and related documentary evidence to human resources to investigate, McLeod says that never occurred. When McLeod followed up directly with human resources in June 2018 to inquire about the status of the complaint, he says, he discovered that neither Clark nor Kovalik ever reported the problem.
Later, McLeod's complaint says, Clark texted him that it was "inappropriate for you to reach out to HR." In a meeting in the following months, Clark also told McLeod that he had made things "socially awkward" with Ramirez and "caused a lot of tension around here."
"We all recognize that no organization is going to be perfect, and things are going to come up from time to time," Seth Rafkin, McLeod's attorney, told Business Insider. "But I think generally laws like the California Fair Employment and Housing Act exist to try to provide that foundation for a fair workplace."
"That objective really can only be furthered if people feel like they can raise issues, and that when there are issues, they'll be acted on."
McLeod said he was ultimately terminated in retaliation for complaining about Ramirez, even though he never received a negative performance review during his four years at the company.
When Business Insider inquired late this month about McLeod's accusations against Ramirez, the company said "Mr. Ramirez is not a current employee of BTIG." However, Ramirez was still listed on BTIG's website as a managing director until shortly after this story was published. As recently as late May — nearly a year after McLeod filed his complaint and three weeks before Business Insider asked BTIG about the case — his headshot was featured on a massive promotional image on the outside of the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square to coincide with a virtual conference where he spoke. He was identified as a BTIG executive.
BTIG said in its statement that it terminated McLeod "for performance reasons" and that it "is confident that it will show that there is no merit to any of McLeod's claims." It said that McLeod's complaints about Ramirez were investigated "with department supervisors and HR involved," and that "Scott Kovalik was not part of that investigation and denies being involved in any conversation with McLeod in connection with his complaint."
In response to McLeod's complaint, BTIG requested the case go to arbitration. A judge partially granted that request in September 2019, but found that one of McLeod's claims — that he was fired in retaliation for reporting discrimination in violation of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act — could proceed in open court.
BTIG is appealing that ruling.
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