Whenever it’s possible I always employ ladies, but enough of my weekend escapades this is serious business news.  Some fellows (or maybe ladies, who knows?) over at one of the many, many equality and human right commission have discovered that women can earn up to 60% less than men in the finance sector. This research indicates that although the number of men and women employed in the finance sector is almost equal the pay divide isn’t and is almost double the national average with women experiencing, as the TUC put it, an impenetrable glass ceiling with 70% of men (as a whole) earned more than £29,000 in 2007/8, while 70% of women earned less than £29,000 in the same period. The world is a funny old place sometimes.

There’s been a few rumours circling about KPMG going down to a four-day week. Its true in part. Auditing is a very seasonal business and as such packages have been put forward to that side of the business and accepted by 85% of the staff. Other areas of the business such as Corporate Recovery, are understandably running at capacity. I’m led to believe that those staff where work is currently slow have been offered the 4 day week, or the chance to take up to 3-months off with a reduction in pay. It’s a testament to KPMG genuinely being a great place to work that so many have volunteered for the scheme: staff with families predominantly going for the 4-day option, and young auditors taking the time off. In fact many have banded together with their workmates to scratch an itch; strapping on their backpacks and setting off to do some traveling together. How’s that for teamwork?! It seems a brave but necessary move for KPMG really will work in their favour.

Everyone’s wearing brown trousers over at financial giant Lehman Brothers where a drying up of work saw shares fall 76% last week - £2.2bn to you and me. All the greater the doff of the bowler hat then to our own Co-operative Bank. They have seen profits up on last year, growth in their 5.5million customer base, and significantly cut their “bad debts” (the cheap mortgage lending that got the markets into this mess to begin with). The bank has always capitalised on its ethical credentials, which has made it stand out, but the big boss David Anderson says the happy days at Co-op are also down to thinking outside the box: in-store banking at their supermarkets; and the creation of a Co-op master brand to allow it to trade across all its businesses. We ran into them at the Sheffield Uni fairs this year, and they’re worth talking to if you see them doing the rounds at the Career Fairs this autumn.

The headline grabbing ninnies who claimed that the City could see as many as 20,000 jobs go in the name of the credit crunch have put on their “I told you so” T-shirts this morning as 1,200 jobs are hanging by a thread at the London HQ of German investment bank Dresdner Klienwort. But is this really a credit crunch catastrophe? The fact is that another German giant, Commerzbank is on the brink of a takeover of DK – and the two banks have been Germanically proficient in telling the world that as many as 9000 staff posts from the current 67,000 may be made redundant. Its business, not recession: the investment banking arm of DK has been losing money for four quarters in a row so it’s understandable that a shake up is in order – well, something’s not working. As in most mergers, it’s the support staff that get hit, where it doesn’t make sense to double up certain roles – in this case, IT workers are expected to take an early bath. Don’t write off Commerzbank or the private banking side of DK – Kleinwort Benson (already ranked in the top 10 UK banks) – mergers mean scale, and scale often means security.

A computer has been sold on eBay for £35 that contained details for 1 million Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest customers on the hard drive, including in some cases account details, customers’ signatures, mobile phone numbers and mothers’ maiden names. American Express are also rumored to be involved. Such equipment is meant to be disposed of securely and completely – not hocked off to third parties. Data processing company Mail Source, which is part of the archiving firm Graphic Data, said it was investigating how the computer equipment had been removed from a secure location.  Last year the Financial Services Authority fined the Nationwide Building Society £980,000 for a security breach, after a laptop containing customer data was stolen from an employee’s home.