When Chris Carlisle was invited to his interview at Deutsche Bank, he needed a suit. “I had no money so I bought one from a charity shop but that looked terrible so I borrowed one from a friend,” says Carlisle, who grew up in Burton-on-Trent and went to a state school. Carlisle had a PhD from Cambridge, and he managed to land a job as an investment banking analyst. “It was such an alien environment to me. All these people in suits. Years later I discovered my file and one of the directors who interviewed me had put a big cross against my name, saying ‘Too scruffy’,” he recalls, laughing. “My boss was called Hugh and he was privately educated and hailed from some country estate somewhere. My dad was an electrician, my background was pretty working-class, so I did feel like an outsider.”
This was more than 20 years ago, but it may be that not much has changed. A report last month found that just 36 per cent of senior leadership positions in the City are held by staff from a working-class background. The City of London’s socio-economic diversity task force, which the Treasury and business department commissioned, has set a target of 50 per cent of leaders from a lower socio-economic background by 2030. Catherine McGuinness, co-chair of the task force and former corporation policy chief, said: “Where an employee comes from, how their accent sounds, or what jobs their parents held, should not dictate how far they progress in the financial and professional services sector.” Major banks including KPMG have now signed up to set goals on class representation, but are quotas the answer?
