THE FIRST LADY OF WALL STREET

HOW DID JANE FRASER, POISED TO TAKE OVER AS CEO OF CITI IN FEBRUARY, BREAK BANKING’S HIGHEST, HARDEST GLASS CEILING?

- CLAIRE ZILLMAN

CEOS OF SEVEN of the largest U.S. banks appeared before the House Financial Services Committee in April 2019. When the panel—all men, all white—were asked under oath if their successors were likely to be female or a person of colour, no one raised his hand.

Without saying a word, the CEOs had put a fine point on a hard truth: Wall Street had never had a female CEO, nor was one likely in the near future.

The message they sent was antithetical to the mood of corporate America at the time. The #MeToo movement had prompted a harsh reexamination of office workplace dynamics; institutional investors were demanding that boards of directors add more women; and companies— banks included—were preaching the merits of diversity.

The moment left such a bleak impression that Fortune dedicated pages of its 2019 Most Powerful Women issue to asking three pressing questions: Why had bank CEO suites remained so impenetrable to women? Who might be the first to breakthrough? And when?

We now have a definitive answer to those last two questions: Citigroup in mid-September announced that Jane Fraser would succeed Michael Corbat as chief executive in February. Barring something unforeseeable, Wall Street banks’ long-standing glass ceiling is history.

But Fraser’s appointment doesn’t eliminate the culture that had kept women out of the corner office for so long. In fact, it raises a new set of questions: Who is the woman who will be the first female CEO of a big Wall Street bank and how did she achieve what has, for so long, appeared unachievable?