Ken Fisher's insulting, crude comments about sex and hitting on women
made recently at an industry conference are far from remarkable. Mr. Fisher sounds like a typical blowhard at a cocktail party, trying to make a racy joke that falls flat and winds up sounding a bit creepy and gross.
What's noteworthy has been the financial advice industry's quick, biting reaction to the money manager's off-color, flippant remarks.
A video posted on Twitter by Alex Chalekian,
the financial adviser who first drew attention to Mr. Fisher's comments on Oct. 9, has more than 150,000 views to date, a staggering number. The heading on the video is "I'm truly disgusted." Many people voiced disbelief and anger on social media in response.
It's important to note that Mr. Chalekian is an also an adviser, but it doesn't appear that his business model is based on stirring up controversies to steal other advisers' clients, as some have insinuated.
Let's take a look at part of what Mr. Fisher said, according to business news website CNBC that got its hands on a recording of the meeting.
"Money, sex, those are the two most private things for most people," so when trying to win new clients you need to be careful, CNBC reported.
He said, "It's like going up to a girl in a bar ... [inaudible] ... going up to a woman in a bar and saying, 'Hey, I want to talk about what's in your pants.'"
One industry executive who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified said those quotes were accurate.
As a result of all this, Fisher Investments has been losing clients. Big ones. Through the end of the week, institutional investors had pulled $2.7 billion in assets from Fisher Investments.
[More: Is it time for Ken Fisher to step down?]
A spokesman for Fisher Investments, John Dillard did not return calls to comment for this column.
To be clear, Mr. Fisher did not sexually harass anyone at this conference. And he eventually apologized for the comments.
But he did stick his foot in his mouth and spark real anger.
And women in this industry already had plenty to be angry about. The broad financial advice industry of roughly 325,000 advisers and wealth managers has done a lousy job of addressing sexism.
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After decades of being paid less than male colleagues, after years of having to keep quiet about sexual harassment if they wanted a promotion, after working under contracts that required grievances settled in private, behind-closed-doors arbitration, here was a 68-year old male CEO shooting his mouth off and thinking nothing of it.
"The interesting thing to me is that Ken Fisher [only] represents part of the problem," said Susan Antilla, an industry journalist who has been writing for decades about how Wall Street treats women and the issue of sexual harassment. "The bigger context is what's happened to women in this industry since the 1980s. They have deliberately been made to feel uncomfortable."
"Women are still afraid to speak up, but more are because of the #MeToo movement," Ms. Antilla said.
The financial advice industry has failed to increase the overall percentage of women financial advisers in more than a decade. According to 2006 testimony by a former head of the Securities Industry Association, now SIFMA, before Congress, women made up 19% of retail brokers. That number, according to multiple sources, has not budged in 13 years and may even be lower.
The financial advice industry also has failed to close the pay gap. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, the wage gap annually for women working full time as "personal financial advisers" is either the largest or among the largest when compared to other professions like medicine or the law.
"The environment still is not very conducive for women being treated equally and making as much money as men," said Ariane Hegewisch, program director for employment and earnings at the institute. "Doctors and lawyers also have a fairly big wage gap, but not quite as big as this industry."
And the financial advice industry has failed to groom top talent to run large firms. Abigail Johnson is the head of
Fidelity Investments, but she is part of the company's founding family. None of the four wirehouses has a woman as CEO. The largest registered investment adviser networks are headed by men. And only one significant independent broker-dealer, Cambridge Investment Research Inc., is run by a woman, CEO Amy Webber.
That's an appalling record for this industry, which regularly promotes its embrace of diversity with meetings and conferences run by trade groups and industry associations. Those meetings and conferences are paid for with dollars from broker-dealers and product sponsors that are run by men, not women.
"It's good this Fisher thing has opened a conversation, but there are bigger issues," Ms. Antilla said. "This shows an industry that has made a lot of noise about improving things for women but hasn't. This industry is supposed to measure performance, but it certainly doesn't measure it when it comes to this."
The issue of sexism and unequal pay and treatment of women is not confined to the financial advice industry, of course. But Mr. Fisher's comment put a face to these societal problems, and many financial advisers don't like what they see.
