Tales from the Boom-Boom Room: Women vs. Wall Street Hardcover - 2002

First line

WALL STREET NEVER COULD help itself when things got good, and in 1982, at the dawn of the greatest bull market in history, it was inevitable that the industry would be gearing up to repeat old mistakes: firms would be hiring too many people, building too many offices, putting on too many fancy parties, and leasing too many stretch limousines.

From the rear cover

AS THE BULL MARKET of the late 1990s soared toward its denouement, America's second-largest brokerage house, Salomon Smith Barney, was hit with a lawsuit that it initially described as having no merit. Three women employees from Garden City, New York, were alleging a pattern of extreme sexual harassment and sex discrimination at their branch office. But they were not to stand alone. A few months later, a similar lawsuit was filed against Merrill Lynch, the nation's biggest brokerage. Soon the plaintiffs in these class actions numbered in the thousands, their bizarre stories streaming in from Manhattan to California. Suits at other firms followed.

They claimed that male brokers had exposed themselves, groped female colleagues, hooted at strippers they brought into the office, and bombarded female coworkers with sexual insults and four-letter nicknames. There was talk of coerced sex, of women held back from advancement, of women seeing their best clients shunted to less productive men.

Oddly, few of these explosive inside stories emerged in the public record. Almost all of the accused men said these events never happened--or they said nothing at all. The firms explained that many of these claims were the kinds of misunderstandings that can happen in offices, or were being invented by disgruntled workers looking for rich settlement awards. The two biggest lawsuits were settled before trial, denying all sides the opportunity--or sparing them the embarrassment--of giving testimony in open court. Many plaintiffs accepted monetary awards and signed what lawyers call "shut-up agreements."

This deeply researched book uncovers what these men and women would not or could not reveal about the upsetting daily rituals at some of the largest financial firms in the world. It depicts women and men, CEOs and worldclass attorneys, struggling in a web of securities regulations and industry grievance practices spun by Wall Street firms to protect themselves against paralyzing lawsuits from investors and, yes, even from their employees. It was a legal labyrinth within which many women thought their cause and their stories would disappear forever, and from which the firms feared their priceless reputations would never emerge intact.

This is the book Wall Street doesn't want you to read, about sexual misconduct it couldn't control--by the reporter who broke the story.

Media reviews

Citations

• BookPage, 11/01/2002, Page 14
• Business Week, 11/25/2002, Page 22
• New York Times, 12/22/2002, Page 7
• Publishers Weekly, 10/21/2002, Page 63