- Bridgewater Associates’ director of research has complained she’s paid less than male peers, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
- Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund with some $20 billion in assets under managerment, told the paper it found no discrepancies during its last audit.
- The woman is the second this year to accuse the firm of pay issues, as it faces layoffs and other struggles amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The highest-ranking woman at the world’s largest hedge fund has become the second person to allege sexist pay discrepancies, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
Karen Karniol-Tambour, director of research and a 14-year veteran of Bridgewater Associates, which manages some $20 billion, made a “formal complaint” about her pay relative to male peers, the paper reported Friday.
The 35-year-old told the paper after its story was published that she has had “ongoing conversations” about her compensation but they do not involve her gender. Nonetheless, her complaint makes her the second woman at the firm to make similar allegations this year.
In July, the hedge fund’s former co-CEO filed a lawsuit against the firm, accusing it of withholding tens of millions of dollars in deferred pay because she took her gender discrimination complaints to Wall Street’s self-regulatory body FINRA.
A spokesperson for the Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund declined any specific comment on the matter to the Wall Street Journal, telling the paper that its annual audit in December 2019 found “no outstanding discrepancies in how men and women are paid at Bridgewater.”
Bridgewater became such a financial power player thanks in part to founder Ray Dalio’s corporate culture of “radical transparency,” but the philosophy hasn’t helped the firm avoid 2020’s struggles.
From February to April, Business Insider reported in in July, the firm’s funds performance caused total asset values to fall 15% while benchmark equities markets sank only about 10% in the same period. The speed-bumps have reportedly led to dozens of layoffs of Bridgewater’s research, recruiting, client services, and other departments.
At the time, a spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that “team members will be working more from home so we won’t need the same number of support people, new technologies are changing what type of people we need and how we serve our clients, and we also want to become more efficient.”
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