‘What steps did he take’? Lawyers query Carney’s role at company beset by sexism allegations
OTTAWA — A year-and-a-half before he became leader of the Liberal party, Mark Carney took on a daunting job. In August 2023, he was appointed chairman of a revamped board of directors at Bloomberg LP, a U.S. financial information and media company.
In a memo to staff, Michael Bloomberg, the co-founder and majority owner of the eponymous company, said he had previously worked with Carney on “climate finance initiatives” and described the new team as “the best and brightest.” Carney had finished his term as governor of the Bank of England three years earlier and had also taken on a role with the United Nations to promote climate initiatives.
But Carney was joining Bloomberg LP at a time of significant controversy.
Since the mid-1990s, the New York City-based company had faced a bevy of lawsuits alleging discrimination and harassment, some of which would later overlap with Carney’s time as chair. Sexism scandals had initially burst into the public eye during Michael Bloomberg’s run for the presidency in 2020.
Media reports show almost all of the lawsuits — some reports found 40 cases involving up to 60 women — recounted incidents that allegedly happened before Carney was appointed board chair. But one employee, who alleges in court documents she alerted her bosses about gender-based pay discrimination, says she was fired and marched out of the building nearly a year into Carney’s tenure.
“There’s no scenario where, as the chair of the board, Mark Carney wouldn’t have been briefed on ongoing litigation. He would have been aware, and he certainly would have been aware of some of the (alleged) systemic cultural issues at Bloomberg LP, specifically around the systemic pay and equity issues and sexism,” said Kathryn Marshall, a human rights and employment lawyer.
In fact, four employment lawyers National Post spoke to argued it’s a board chair’s job to set the direction of the company, and that a company’s culture can only be dictated from the top.
“If you’re going to take a job and there’s already a public scandal, as there was here, you either refuse to take it, or you take it on a condition that you’re allowed to deal with the scandal and end it. That’s clearly not what happened here,” said Howard Levitt, a senior partner at Levitt LLP, which specializes in employment and labour law, and who writes a regular column for Financial Post.
Carney is currently leading the Liberal party in an election he called shortly after being elected party leader to replace the unpopular Justin Trudeau.
National Post asked his campaign team whether he had made any effort to change the culture at Bloomberg LP or whether the company’s alleged problems raised any red flags before he took the job. His campaign staff pointed to his track before accepting the position.
“Mr. Carney brings a long track record of pushing for stronger women’s representation in business and finance and has consistently championed the benefits of diversity and inclusion,” said Mohammad Hussain, a spokesperson for Carney’s campaign.
“As prime minister, he will continue to lead with a strong commitment to respectful, safe, and empowering workspaces.”
Labour lawyer Annamaria Enenajor, a partner at Ruby Shiller Enenajor, said Carney’s role as chairman amid the allegations against Bloomberg LP is worth examining.
“I think the culture of an organization does start at the top. So to the extent that he saw and knew and understood the problem, what steps did he take to transform the culture? I think that’s a fair question,” said Enenajor.
But Enenajor also said it would have been extremely difficult for Carney to make any impact on the corporate culture in the short time he was there.
“These companies are such big beasts, so to expect a change within two years is challenging, unless he was brought in for that specific purpose,” she said.
In 2020, Michael Bloomberg, entrepreneur and former New York City mayor, endured a bruising and costly run for the Democratic presidential nomination as the press and his rivals criticized him for the culture at his company, which was described in press reports as a degrading and hostile environment .
One former salesperson had sued the company for workplace discrimination, alleging Michael Bloomberg, then the CEO, had said she should “kill it,” when he found out she was pregnant. Bloomberg denied the allegation and later reached a confidential settlement with the woman.
Bloomberg LP’s pattern of reaching these confidential settlements — enforced by non-disclosure clauses — was raised by Michael Bloomberg’s opponent Elizabeth Warren at a Democratic nominees’ debate and the exchange was widely seen as putting in a nail in the coffin of Bloomberg’s bid for the presidency.
In 2020, Michael Bloomberg acknowledged that non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) can create unfairness for women complainants. “I recognize that NDAs, particularly when they are used in the context of sexual harassment and sexual assault, promote a culture of silence in the workplace and contribute to a culture of women not feeling safe or supported,” he said. He offered to free three complainants from their NDAs.
Over the years, even after the revelations in the Democratic primary, Carney has lavished praise on Michael Bloomberg for his “great leadership,” philanthropic activities and because he “has improved the lives of countless people (in) the United States and across the world.”
Before long, that mutual admiration would result in Carney joining Bloomberg LP as its new chairman in 2023, while the company was still battling several harassment and discrimination lawsuits. Because Bloomberg is a privately held company, Carney’s compensation was not publicly disclosed.
A few months before Carney assumed his chair position, one senior employee had said she revealed information to her bosses that the company was underpaying women.
Su Keenan, a veteran news anchor, alleges in court documents she had discovered shocking disparities in pay between men and women at the company. One example she showed her boss in 2023 was a male colleague, 20 years younger than her and in the same role, allegedly making more than US$100,000 more per year and getting nearly double her annual bonus.
Keenan said she showed this information to her bosses in mid-2023, just before Carney was appointed chairman. After complaining about what she saw as discrimination, Keenan alleges she was moved to a desk in “a vacant lower floor on the far side” of the building.
She was later fired in February 2024, and the 25-year veteran of the company says she was escorted out of the Bloomberg LP building by security guards. Carney had been chairman for six months by then, although there is no indication of his role, if any, in the decision.
In June 2024, Keenan sued the company, alleging she was fired because she had complained about discrimination and gender pay discrepancies at the network.
Keenan’s lawsuit alleges the company used “discriminatory job codes” to hide the pay gap between male and female TV journalists in company systems. The lawsuit argues women in on-air TV roles were sometimes classified with codes that normally were reserved for off-air producers. Bloomberg LP had sought to have the case dismissed as invalid, but its motion was denied last month by the New York State Supreme Court .
Asked specifically about allegations of gender pay discrimination at Bloomberg LP, and more broadly in the corporate world, Carney’s team responded with the statement that he has “a long track record of pushing for stronger women’s representation” in the business world.
Indeed, Carney made speeches when he was governor of the Bank of England complaining that progress on gender equality in the workplace has been slow.
“For too long the representation of women in middle and senior tiers of management has lagged that in other leading sectors. For too long, results have fallen short of good intentions,” said Carney.
Carney’s team didn’t respond to a question from National Post about whether, when given the chance at Bloomberg LP to put his good intentions into action, he followed through with it.
Another gender discrimination case continues to work its way through the American courts . A former national security reporter at Bloomberg, Nafeesa Syeed, alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2020 (before Carney’s time) that she was “demeaned” because of her Southeast Asian heritage and that the workplace was toxic.
The lawsuit alleges that Syeed was often mistaken for another Southeast Asian woman in the office and that, when she was rejected for a promotion, she was told it was because the job wasn’t a “diversity slot.” Bloomberg has sought to have the case dismissed and argued that it had no record of any complaint from Syeed while she worked there.
According to Business Insider , it’s just one of nearly 40 civil suits against Bloomberg LP since 1996, brought by more than 60 women. Bloomberg LP has publicly denied systemic issues of pay inequity and sexism and a few of the cases have been settled out of court or dismissed.
Bloomberg LLP has denied allegations that it has a sexist corporate culture. The company told Business Insider it “strongly supports a culture that treats all employees with dignity and respect, and enforces that culture through clear policies and practices. Our diversity and inclusion efforts are designed to foster a culture where thousands of people are proud to work every day. It’s also why Bloomberg is consistently ranked at the top of surveys about inclusive workplaces, and why we’ve been rated the top company for career growth opportunities in the US.”
Carney’s campaign team, asked whether he was concerned about the culture of the company he joined in 2023, or whether he did anything to correct any problems, did not directly speak to the question.
“Mr. Carney became Chair of the Board of Bloomberg in August 2023. The company is best positioned to respond to the specific incidents you identify, the majority of which were reported years before his appointment,” said Carney’s spokesperson.
Lawyers that spoke to National Post said, at the very least, Carney should have made it a priority to get to the bottom of the problems.
Shalini Konanur, executive director and a senior lawyer at the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, said she couldn’t comment directly on Carney’s time at Bloomberg LP, but said that, in her experience, “the culture and tone is set from the top.”
“Those positions actually have weight in setting the tone and boards have weight in setting the priorities. And their employee is the CEO,” said Konanur. “There are things you can do in organizations, once you collect data, there are very concrete things you can do in an organization to deal with those issues.”
Another Bloomberg LP reporter joined Syeed’s lawsuit in 2020, alleging now-familiar complaints about pay discrepancies between male and female employees. The lawsuits would later be separated while Syeed’s claim was held up by jurisdictional wrangling.
Naula Ndugga, a producer at Bloomberg LP, alleged she had been paid less than her male counterparts since starting at the company as an intern. She argued male interns were paid $10,000 more than her when being hired out of the internship program.
Ndugga also alleges in the lawsuit she suffered racially insensitive treatment at the hands of her bosses and was depicted as an “angry Black woman” by a male supervisor.
The court documents contain an exchange about a subpoena issued to Ndugga’s therapist at the time, because Bloomberg LP lawyers argued the therapist’s notes weren’t sufficient to assess whether Ndugga genuinely experienced emotional distress. Bloomberg LP has sought to have the case dismissed on legal grounds.
Marshall said she has seen companies that use similar legal tactics that can make people not want to come forward.
“(A) defence strategy, which is very popular in the U.S., is just to go full scorched earth, and do whatever you can to make the victim regret the day they ever sued,” said Marshall.
National Post
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