When banks and financial services companies realised last year that they would have to publish the gap between how much they paid men and women on average per hour on a government website, the first reaction of many was: How can we get around this requirement?

Anne Sammon, a managing associate at law firm Simmons & Simmons, said some clients asked her whether it was possible to divide up their companies into smaller chunks so they fell underneath the rules’ thresholds, or even whether they ought to create new entities that only their senior (mostly male) members of staff would be housed in.