Wall Street creating financial products for women

Global Business

Gender diversity, or the lack of gender diversity in business, has become a hot topic ever since Facebook, Yahoo and other tech giants were pressured to reveal their hiring records.
The numbers are disappointing and yet studies show gender diverse companies tend to outperform less diverse companies. It’s no wonder then that Wall Street is starting to create financial products that tap into female talent. Karina Huber reports.
Follow Karina Huber on Twitter @kkat31

Barclay’s bank recently rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange to launch its latest investment product: an exchange traded note or “ETN” that is betting on women.

Dave Nadig, Chief Investment Officer at ETF.com, says, “In this case by changing in an exchange traded note, what you’re really doing is buying Barclay’s debt that will pay you as if you had invested in all of the companies in this index.”

The fund tracks an index that includes companies like Yahoo, PepsiCo and General Motors who all have female CEO’s. It also includes General Electric, Pfizer and Verizon where at least 25% of their board members are women. They are companies that stand out for having strong female leadership. Women make up less than 5% of CEOs and roughly 17 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies.

But Dave Nadig, Chief Investment office for ETF.com, says he isn’t convinced investors will buy into the new fund. “People when they have their social hat on – they tend to think about the products that they’re buying, the places they’re going, the kinds of media that they’re consuming. Often they then turn that part of their brain off when they go to make an investing decision.”

Susan Stehlik is a Professor of Management Communication at NYU Stern. She says what is key to a business’s success is diversity of all kinds.

“Just because a business is owned by a woman, doesn’t mean it is going to be successful. When you have diverse teams – and the research shows it, experience shows it – you have better decision making because you’re not just reflecting each other’s opinion, you’re actually challenging it.”

She says asking the tough questions in business leads to better solutions in an increasingly global and diverse world.

For more on women in the workplace, CCTV America spoke to Bonnie Marcus,  executive coach and founder of the online platform Women’s Success Coaching.