In the months since Steven A. Cohen became the owner of the Mets, he has been everything he has ever been as one of Wall Street’s most secret money managers: affable and accessible.
Mr. Cohen gave news conferences and numerous interviews to New York sports media – something he rarely did with business reporters who reported each turnaround in an insider scandal that led one of his multi-billion dollar hedge funds to plead guilty to securities fraud charges in 2013.
And he has become a fan favorite on Twitter – often posting his ideas on the Mets and on the dealings of other professional baseball teams. Cohen, 64, even seems to rejoice with the fans who responded to him on Twitter.
But in his hedge funds, Cohen has long been known for his fickle nature that has led him to attack traders he believes are not making enough money. Now, a recently opened gender discrimination complaint filed by a former Cohen manager offers a glimpse of his volatile temperament and what some women have said is an overtly sexist and hostile culture at his hedge fund company Point72 Asset Management, with headquarters in Stamford, Conn.
In the complaint, Sara Vavra, who led a trade group in Point72, said Cohen stopped by his office in July 2019 and started “an abusive and swearing tirade” in which he said his job “sucked” and she was “stupid.” She said in the complaint that, in addition to some generic expletives, Cohen also used a derogatory word for a woman’s genitals.
Vavra’s complaint was filed last summer with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. In it, she said that later, on the same day of her verbal attack, Mr. Cohen summoned her to someone else’s office at the company, where he continued to belittle her skills. This time, he did it in front of other people and again used profane language. She said that Mr. Cohen threatened to fire her.
“Cohen ridiculed me, calling me an ‘idiot’ and incompetent,” she said in the complaint. “He told me that I was ‘wrong about everything’.” She said he added, “I should fire you because you are so stupid.”
Ultimately, Point72 dismissed her in October 2019, prompting her to file her complaint of discrimination with the Connecticut commission. Just a month before his resignation, Point72 tweeted congratulations to her for being named one of the “50 women leaders in hedge funds” by an industry publication.
“We determined that Ms. Vavra made numerous false statements during her employment about things big and small and the same is true of her complaint, including the particularly offensive accusation that Steve used vulgar language when addressing her,” said Tiffany Galvin- Cohen, a spokesperson for Point72. “Steve emphatically denies having made this comment to Mrs. Vavra at any time.”
The complaint was made public recently because Ms. Vavra asked the commission in December to release her jurisdiction over the matter, giving her the right to sue in court. The New York Times had an excellent request for freedom of information for the complaint. Point72 had filed his own papers contesting his claims.
Ms. Vavra and her lawyer did not return requests for comment. The issue is now being litigated in private arbitration between the parties.
The charges against Cohen and his company come at a time of growing concern about the treatment of women on Wall Street and in the world of professional sports. In July, The Washington Post published an article about a history of sexism and mistreatment of Washington Football Team employees. Houston Astros fired its assistant general manager, Brandon Taubman, after he addressed inappropriate comments to a group of reporters after a 2019 postseason victory.
Several professional baseball teams have taken steps to provide high-level jobs for women. Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng in November as the first female general manager in the Major League Baseball, and the Boston Red Sox on Monday hired Bianca Smith, who is believed to be the first black female coach in the minor baseball leagues.
In the race for baseball team owners to approve Cohen’s $ 2.4 billion offer to buy the Mets, there was concern that a series of allegations of sexist behavior at Point72 could harm the business. It was known at the time that Mrs. Vavra had filed a complaint against Point72, but her specific nature was unclear because the matter was closed.
The Major League Baseball declined to comment for this article.
Mr. Cohen tried to deal with a 2018 lawsuit accusing Point72 of promoting a hostile workplace for women by making a deal with the person who filed the complaint, Lauren Bonner, for an undisclosed sum last summer. In that case, Ms. Bonner painted a picture of Mr. Cohen’s company as a testosterone-powered men’s club, where female employees were underpaid compared to their male colleagues and where senior male employees regularly commented on women’s bodies and despised women and their skills at meetings.
The dispute with Bonner, a former executive in Point72’s recruitment division, was resolved last year after the matter was brought to arbitration.
But Bonner’s action and a complaint she made in the arbitration did not contain any accusations that Cohen was using the kind of vulgar and profane language that Vavra said he used with her in 2019.
In the 22-page complaint – technically called a sworn statement of illegal discriminatory practice – Ms. Vavra said that Cohen publicly attacked her for several months in 2019, often using four-letter words to do so. She said he verbally scolded her, although her trading group was one of the best in the hedge fund and she received a positive performance review from Mr. Cohen in December 2018. Ms. Vavra said that Mr. Cohen said that she was one of the hardest working companies, and she received a performance bonus.
The complaint contains allegations that other people in the 1,400-employee company also made sexist comments. Ms. Vavra stated that Mr. Cohen had a similar habit of publicly scolding his assistants. She said that her verbally abusive behavior was so bad that the company had to move some of its assistants “to a different wing of the building so they could not be heard”. The company disputes Ms. Vavra’s claims about how assistants were treated.
Mrs. Vavra filed her complaint after being fired from Point72 and replaced by a man. She led the hedge fund team of so-called global macro traders – a group that places bets based on monetary and geopolitical events. Ms. Vavra said she was fired due to Point72’s practice of employing a double standard with the company’s few employees. The hedge fund, she said, claimed that it fired her for “serious misconduct” and because it violated company policies.