Tales from the Boom-Boom Room

In the 1990s, women in record numbers looked to Wall Street as a great place to build successful and lucrative careers. What many of them found there was no meritocracy, but an industry living by the rules of a 1960s fraternity, with the money and legal clout to silence any challenges. Award-winning columnist Susan Antilla broke the story of shocking sex discrimination at Smith Barney and other major brokers. Her disclosures in the press were a rallying cry for class actions challenging the sexual hazing and outrageous disparities in pay that shackled professional women on Wall Street.

Taking its title from the infamous basement party room of Smith Barney’s Garden City, New York, branch office, and representing years of extensive research, Tales from the Boom-Boom Room traces the story of the lead whistle-blower, Pam Martens, the crusading broker who put an entire industry on the defensive, then found herself at odds not just with her local bosses and with powerful figures like Travelers Group president Jamie Dimon, but with her coplaintiffs and attorneys. The women’s employment agreements forbade them to sue, and only an ingenious legal strategy circumvented that virtual gag rule and brought the scandal out from behind the closed doors of arbitration. This is a riveting human, legal, and business drama of women and men in the financial institutions on Wall Street and around America. Preface.
Prologue.

1 Garden City’s Party Spot.
2 From Appalachia to Wall Street.
3 Wild Times for Wall Street.
4 Nick’s Way with Women.
5 Martens’s Disorienting Orientation.
6 Martens Snaps.
7 That Was Happening to You, Too?
8 Dear Mr. Dimon: Martens Fights Back.
9 Getting Lawyers, Getting Fired.
10 Attacking the No-Court System.
11 Going Public.
12 Momentum: Merrill’s Women Sue.
13 Martens without Martens.
14 Settling the Settlement.
15 Pariah or Visionary?
16 Arbitration After All.

Epilogue.
Notes.
Index.

SUSAN ANTILLA is a columnist for Bloomberg News. At the New York Times, she launched the weekly “Investing” column in the Saturday edition and the “Between Main & Wall” ombudsman column. Her articles and columns have appeared in People, USA Today, the Baltimore Sun, Town & Country, Working Woman, Savvy, and Mirabella. She was twice selected as a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and was among the top investigative reporters named to TJFR’s “1999 Blue Chip Newsroom.” A frequent lecturerand panelist, she holds a master’s degree in journalism from New York University, where she has taught as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Journalism.

AS THE BULL MARKET of the late 1990s soared toward its denouement, America’s second-largest brokerage house, Salomon Smith Barney, was hit with a lawsuit that it initially described as having no merit. Three women employees from Garden City, New York, were alleging a pattern of extreme sexual harassment and sex discrimination at their branch office. But they were not to stand alone. A few months later, a similar lawsuit was filed against Merrill Lynch, the nation’s biggest brokerage. Soon the plaintiffs in these class actions numbered in the thousands, their bizarre stories streaming in from Manhattan to California. Suits at other firms followed.

They claimed that male brokers had exposed themselves, groped female colleagues, hooted at strippers they brought into the office, and bombarded female coworkers with sexual insults and four-letter nicknames. There was talk of coerced sex, of women held back from advancement, of women seeing their best clients shunted to less productive men.

Oddly, few of these explosive inside stories emerged in the public record. Almost all of the accused men said these events never happened—or they said nothing at all. The firms explained that many of these claims were the kinds of misunderstandings that can happen in offices, or were being invented by disgruntled workers looking for rich settlement awards. The two biggest lawsuits were settled before trial, denying all sides the opportunity—or sparing them the embarrassment—of giving testimony in open court. Many plaintiffs accepted monetary awards and signed what lawyers call “shut-up agreements.”

This deeply researched book uncovers what these men and women would not or could not reveal about the upsetting daily rituals at some of the largest financial firms in the world. It depicts women and men, CEOs and worldclass attorneys, struggling in a web of securities regulations and industry grievance practices spun by Wall Street firms to protect themselves against paralyzing lawsuits from investors and, yes, even from their employees. It was a legal labyrinth within which many women thought their cause and their stories would disappear forever, and from which the firms feared their priceless reputations would never emerge intact.

This is the book Wall Street doesn’t want you to read, about sexual misconduct it couldn’t control—by the reporter who broke the story. “A gutsy, important book.”
—Kate Jennings, The Financial Times, December 5, 2002

“At last, a book that shows what a really good investigative reporter can do with the hot topic of sexual harassment.”
—Lucy Sussex, Sunday Age (Melbourne), November 24, 2002

“Meticulously researched . . . a work of compelling Wall Street anthropology . . . Tales from the Boom-Boom Room does a tremendous job of working the reader into a low, steady rage. . . . Ms. Antilla’s book is an occasion to put an entire institutional pattern of behavior on open display.”
—Stephen Metcalf, The New York Observer, December 2, 2002

“Comprehensive and sharply written. . . . The author turns up some outrageous details.”
—Heather Timmons, Business Week, November 25, 2002

“A powerful and startling indictment of the sexist behavior of stockbrokers working for Wall Street and its offshoots. . . . This skillfully written book reads like a fascinating novel, so graphic and dramatic that it is more like a screenplay than a report.”
—Rolf Dobelli, getAbstract, December 31, 2002

“An explosive new book that has scandalized Manhattan’s financial district.”
—Sarah Baxter, Sunday Times (London), November 17, 2002

“A startling new book. . . . A catalogue of long-suppressed abuse of women.”
—James Langton, The Evening Standard (London), December 5, 2002

“A compelling combination of investigative journalism and social-corporate analysis. . . . As riveting as anything on the best-selling fiction list if not for the sobering reminders that these are actual women fighting for justice against tremendous odds.”
—Angele McQuade, Better Investing, March 2003