(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc <GS.N> has invited 60 executives to become partners as of Jan. 1, nearly half of them from diverse backgrounds, the bank said on Thursday.
Goldman’s partners collectively own a small stake in the firm and are the bank’s most elite employees, typically taking home million-dollar salary packages and having access to lucrative investment opportunities. https://bit.ly/38PuyQj
The bank said 47% of this year’s class are either women, Black, Asian or Latino. Forty-three are based in the Americas, with 13 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, three in the Asia-Pacific region and one in Bengaluru.
Sixteen of the new partners are women, it said. In technology investment banking, a unit the bank has heavily invested in, seven new partners were named.
Jane Dunlevie, 35, is among the youngest partners promoted on Thursday, after spending 11 years with the bank. As co-head of global internet investment banking, she has been advising high-profile clients such as Shopify and Pinterest.
“There has been so much activity in the internet sector and tech more broadly, which has contributed to the success of all of my TMT colleagues that are being promoted today,” Dunlevie said in an interview.
Chief Executive David Solomon has said he wants to move faster to increase diversity among the bank’s senior ranks.
Goldman has set some of the most aggressive and specific goals among the big banks, requiring that more Black, Latino and female professionals be interviewed and hired for jobs at the bank. The bank interviews at least two diverse candidates for any senior job opening. Despite that, Solomon has said the bank is not increasing diversity fast enough.
Goldman’s partnership ranks have nearly doubled since the bank went public in 1999, but have shrunk over the last decade as part of a strategy to make the Wall Street bank less top-heavy. Under Solomon, who took over as the bank’s chief executive officer in 2018, that trend has continued.
Goldman named 69 new partners two years ago during Solomon’s first year in the role.
(Reporting by Matt Scuffham and Krystal Hu in New York and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni, Jonathan Oatis and Richard Chang)
