The MWVBE factor in the quotes of tech companies

It also happened last month with the IPO of Robinhood, led by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, but which also included four companies in this category among the 17 underwriters. Tech companies and large banks, controlled predominantly by white males, have found themselves over the past year and a half under pressure to increase their diversity in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd and the riots that followed under the coordination by the Black Lives Matter movement. Companies have begun to understand the requests of their stakeholders, promising to improve from the point of view of inclusion, social justice, financing external programs and improving internal diversity with specific initiatives. At that time the IPO market was at a standstill due to Covid, but at the reopening, after the summer months of 2020, the trend had already started. Snoflake had four MWVBE underwriters (the same as Robinhood), Unity two, Airbnb a dozen. Cynthia DiBartolo, founder ten years ago of the investment company Tigress Financial Partners and an ardent supporter of women and minorities as a founding party in the closing of financial agreements, explains in particular with reference to the Robinhood case: “Even if we applaud what they have done, we cannot not to think that a society devoted to the democratization of investments could have sent an even stronger message in the field of diversity ”. In July of this year, Tigress was the first broker owned by an MWVBE property to become a member of the New York Stock Exchange. Previously, he was among the five underwriters for the IPO of Monday.com, a manufacturer of in-cloud systems for project and team management. As next steps, Cynthia DiBartolo aims to spread the use of a “diversity questionnaire” that companies can submit to the companies they intend to do business with to find out their degree of inclusiveness as well as a series of other important data to assess their risk. reputational. Together with JPMorgan, it is systematizing this data, in order to create a real database to consult, in order to expand the possibilities for MWVBE companies to participate in large agreements. Alongside Cynthia DiBartolo, other organizations are working to break down barriers to entry for finance to businesses owned by women and minorities, such as Rainbow PUSH and her Wall Street Project, actively committed to diversity in contacting companies that decide to go public. scholarship to raise awareness of the possibility of involving even more inclusive businesses among subscribers: “Without pressure, but numbers in hand, we show the advantages of having these companies on board, which do not come out of nowhere, but have passed years of tests in the field” The numbers are still small, but, as is happening on the boards of large companies that are slowly becoming more inclusive, something is moving. The events of 2020 have turned the wind, the diversity requirements for listed companies are becoming more stringent and it is hoped that even for IPOs, a greater balance will begin to be sought. Yet the culture of finance is slow to change. The day before Robinhood’s IPO, the language learning app Duolingo, supported by Goldman Sachs and nine other companies, went public. Among these, no MWVBE. The CEO of Duolingo, questioned on the matter, replied that, even if his company is committed to diversity in the workplace and has a board composed of 50% of women, the thought of applying the same criteria also to subscribers is not never been considered.