A group of female brokers at Smith Barney, the brokerage arm of Citigroup, has filed a lawsuit in a California court claiming they were systematically passed over by the bank when lucrative accounts were being allocated.

The lawsuit, filed in a US district court in San Francisco by one current and three former employees of Smith Barney, alleges that the brokerage firm discriminated against women when its "virtually all-male branch management" assigned accounts to brokers, The Wall Street Journal reported.