Our culture
WestLB offers a dynamic and challenging work environment, where you’ll get plenty of early responsibility and opportunities to stand out. We hire people who are ready to go the extra mile to get things done so, occasionally, we all find ourselves working late. However, at WestLB we really do care about people and we don’t believe in the high stress, fear-driven culture of that some larger banks pursue. And we never lose sight of the fact that our employees are individuals with lives outside the office, which is why the atmosphere at WestLB is so much friendlier and more personal.
Diversity initiatives
We don’t just wait for diversity to come to us, we take the initiative. We do this by sponsoring banking events for inner city school children, offering summer internships to some of these school leavers and participating in “Women in Investment Banking” events.
At WestLB we pride ourselves on the diversity of our graduate intake. This year’s graduates come from a very diverse range of countries including Zambia, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, North America, China and the UK. Last year our intake was just as diverse with graduates coming from 10 different nationalities that included Mongolia, North America, Greece, Germany, China, Hong Kong, the Ukraine, Ireland and the UK. Not bad for an intake of 17!
In addition, the number of females in our intake groups has also increased significantly. In 2005, 22% of our intake was female, while this year it rose to 30%.
Corporate responsibility and
sustainability management
For WestLB, the economy, environment and social responsibility are the three pillars of sustainable development. We believe that balancing these in all our activities offers significant benefits to clients, employees, shareholders, bond holders and the community.
In 2003, we were one of four Banks to draft a set of voluntary environmental and social standards for project finance called the “Equator Principles”. These principles ensure projects are classified according to environmental and social risks and that environmental impact assessments are carried out to ensure all projects comply with local and international environmental guidelines.
The Equator Principles have now been adopted by 28 banks.
We also signed the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) Statement on the environment and sustainable development in January 2002. In order to comply with this, we are developing a comprehensive sustainability management approach.