and we were getting women coming forward

and telling their stories of harassment, assault

or discrimination in their workplace.

We're like this is only a matter of time

before we get some really good stories

coming out of the financial industry because

we know that it exists.

Wall Street just like lots of areas has

some serious and pretty deep problems.

But a big cultural moment has not happened.

Now to the #MeToo movement growing this morning

in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

High powered men across entertainment, media,

technology and politics have been brought down

by women who feel empowered to tell their stories.

But on Wall Street a system of silence

has protected the status quo.

The primary difference for women on Wall Street

versus other industries is money.

And money is power and Wall Street has the most money

and most power of any industry.

You know story by story we get this peek

into this machine, different arms of the machine.

Those arms explain why there was no revolution

in finance this year.

Instead there were rare moments of revelation

that pierced the silence.

Keeping people quiet doesn't make it better

for the business.

You don't hire the best people if you exclude people

who are brave.

This is the story of the forces

that have kept the #MeToo reckoning

from hitting Wall Street.

At least so far.

Women didn't want to come forward with their stories.

They didn't want to go on the record.

The women I talked to didn't even want to name

the people who had assaulted them or hurt their careers

in a particular way.

And we kind of had to take a step back

and say why is that happening.

And evaluate what is the culture in Wall Street

or the system in Wall Street

that's keeping women from doing that?

There is a machine of silence

that we've learned about that has to do

with arbitration and human resources

and public relations and a culture of fear

and a culture of money.

And all those things together combine

to create kind of a wall between allegations

and transparency.

First of all you have this very male dominated industry.

About 26% of senior executives on Wall Street

are women and when you get to the CEO level

it's abysmally low.

Women only make up 8% of CEOs

at major financial institutions.

And in the history of Wall Street, no woman has ever led

any of the six largest U.S. banks.

I remember Wall Street women saying to me,

what do you think Wall Street values?

They value relationships and they value secrecy

and they value loyalty and if I dare

to go against those things, I will be exiled.

And if someone does decide to complain

it isn't done in public.

But rather hidden behind a widespread system

of arbitration.

Arbitration needs to be relabeled.

It needs to be called forced silence.

Arbitration is a private system

that takes fights behind closed doors

away from a judge and jury.

It was originally used to solve industry disputes

but Wall Street has helped it spread to all kinds

of fights including harassment.

Civil Rights issues should be dealt with in court.

Civil Rights issues should be transparent.

That's Lee Stowell, a Wall Street veteran

whose suing Cantor Fitzgerald for harassment,

discrimination and retaliation.

But that's just a part of her fight.

She's also battling to stay away from arbitration.

I want to go to court because I want it to be transparent.

It's not a female thing.

It's not a male thing, it's a human thing.

What's so wild for us as reporters following Lee Stowell's

story is that she had not one but apparently

two arbitration agreements Cantor says.

So basically she said, I'm not supposed to be

thrown out of court, I'm supposed to stay in this venue

and the court agreed with her.

Cantor denies her allegations

and is appealing the decision to let her stay in court.

But these days judges all the way up to the Supreme Court

have been siding with arbitration.

From Wall Street's perspective that system

is quicker, cheaper, quieter and just as fair

as going to court.

Women like Lee see it differently.

For those of us who are not corporations,

we want to be able to show the evidence

and we want to be able to change behavior.

Women are not learning about each other.

They're being isolated from each other.

So they can't really come together

and bring something bigger against a bank or an institution

and say, you have a major problem here

because it's all in the hush-hush system

that nobody knows about.

While Lee was fighting against arbitration,

women thousands of miles away were struggling

to have their stories heard inside Lloyd's of London.

Lloyd's is a 331-year-old exchange for the worldwide

insurance market that's steeped in tradition.

So this is the large loss book, where we show

a book for the current day and a corresponding book

from 100 years ago.

Much of the work there is still done face-to-face

by mostly middle-aged white men on paper

and sealed with rubber stamps.

But reporting from Bloomberg uncovered

that Lloyd's also has a deep seated tradition

of sexual harassment.

We spoke to women who had been attacked by their bosses

in pubs and taxis.

And we'd spoken to other women who were deluged

with text, graphic text, graphic emails

from their employers basically soliciting for sex.

What's so sinister about these stories

isn't just the picture they paint of rich men behaving

badly but the way HR protected them.

At least in my experience for the Wall Street firms.

Most of the time say that they simply can't go to HR.

It's just not an option.

Because if they do, HR is then going to report them

to either the exact male that they just complained about

or somebody else in a position to make things difficult.

But of the ones who did go to HR,

they reported being discouraged from pursuing

their complaints further.

They were warned about the possibility of being marked out

as difficult women.

So they kept quiet.

Lloyd's first female CEO, Inga Beale,

tried to change that.

But she was met with hostility, including a death threat.

And was eventually replaced by John Neal in 2018.

Bloomberg's reporting hit a few months later.

Two executives at the company have now resigned

following allegations of sexual harassment.

Sometimes when we're reporting our stories like this

companies just deny what we find

and say, look everything is fine.

In the case of Lloyd's, Gavin's reporting was so powerful

that the CEO of this insurance market

came out afterwards and said, yeah, this is pretty much

unacceptable and we will change.

This is not the Lloyd's that I want to be part of

and not the Lloyd's that many of my colleagues feel

they want to be part of either.

Lloyd's unveiled a whistleblower hotline,

banned alcohol and announced a lifetime ban

for sexual harassers.

Whether there is any long-term impact from these measures

it's too early, I think to tell.

And while the Lloyd's story

showed how women's stories can help bring an antiquated

institution into the 21st Century,

a conference in California showed what happens

when the industry's bystanders break their silence.

Everyone it's Alex Chalekian,

just got back from the Tiburone CEO Summit dinner.

In October of 2019, Alex Chalekian

who runs a firm called Lake Avenue Financial

was attending a conference and did something unheard

of on Wall Street.

He publicly spoke out against someone

at an invite-only conference.

Things that were said by Ken Fisher

were just absolutely horrifying.

He made comments about genitalia.

He talked about picking up on a girl

and don't show them what's in your pants.

And shortly after, Bloomberg reporter

Sabrina Willmer was able to speak to Ken Fisher

on the phone.

His initial reaction is that he didn't think

it was a big deal because he's been saying

this a very long time.

And nobody has questioned it.

Ken Fisher was speaking in a way that he was used

to speaking which was gross, quite frankly.

I don't know if I could but if was 30-years-old

and I had to do over again, I'd have more sex.

While I could, while I could.

Once you get older you're like a Christmas tree,

you're firm once a year and the balls are for decoration.

But instead of awkward laugher

behind closed doors, this year Fisher's institutional

clients from Texas to New Hampshire yanked

about $4 billion from his investment firm.

Fisher CEO, Damian Ornani, even went directly

in front of a Los Angeles pension board to apologize.

I'd just like to apologize.

That we're here today talking about this

and these inappropriate comments happened

in the first place.

Ken knows they were wrong, I know they are wrong.

But for pension board members

like Brian Pendleton that apology wasn't enough.

I'm incredibly proud of what the L.A. Police

and Fire Pension Commission did by decisively

terminating the contract with Ken Fisher.

That it hopefully sends a loud message

to the financial community.

While about $4 billion was lost, the firm still

manages $115 billion.

And the company has said that since the incident

their assets have actually grown.

And we talked to each other inside the newsroom

and we ask is this as much change as we're gonna see.

It's plausible that is as far from the status quo

as things are gonna veer and things will get back

to business as usual.

I'm not in favor of outing other women

but I will say that women have reached out to me

and told me that we need to keep this going.

I'm certainly a drop in bucket to the issue

and the only way to change that is for a couple

of people to stand up and I'm hopeful

that other people will stand next to me.

We're never going to stop trying to tell women's stories.

What we can hope for is that the industry is moving

in a direction in which more women feel comfortable

telling their stories.