Whatever shape the British financial sector is in after the current troubles have passed, the City will still need to find and employ gifted people. But a new report suggests that the financial sector has been overlooking a well of talent that is available to it: women.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has revealed that the average man working in finance in the UK earns more than one-and-a-half times as much as the average woman in the sector. This is extremely high: the equivalent, already unsatisfactory, figure for the rest of the British economy is 28 per cent. The industry must correct this imbalance.