City adds gay employees

New research suggests that the City of London is slowly opening its arms to gay and lesbian employees.

A survey by recruitment firm Joslin Rowe Associates suggests 6.3% of the 900,000 people working in London's banking, finance and insurance sector are gay or lesbian, up marginally from 5.9% two years ago.

Tara Ricks, managing director of Joslin Rowe says the City's growing willingness to embrace gay staff is all part of its broader enthusiasm for diversity: "The City knows it must attract the best talent from all walks of life and from around the world. Many firms now actively target gay undergraduates, for example, something that was not the case five or ten years ago.'

Targeting still has rather a long way to go, however. City institutions need to hire another 35,000 gay and lesbian employees before the proportion of gay people they employ matches that across London's population as whole.

Despite this, several banks rank on an index of the best places to work in the U.K. produced by Stonewall, a gay and lesbian campaigning organisation.

Best investment banks to work for gay employees:

1 Credit Suisse (9 overall)

2 JP Morgan (9 overall)

3 UBS (15 overall)

4 Citigroup (20 overall)

5 Goldman Sachs (28 overall)

6 Morgan Stanley (35 overall)

7 Lehman Brothers (39 overall)

8 Deutsche Bank (66 overall)

9 Merrill Lynch (75 overall)

10 Morley Fund Management (98 overall)

Source: Stonewall