Goldman Sachs is taking another step away from the diversity mandates the Wall Street firm had long championed.
Goldman will no longer explicitly consider race, gender and sexual orientation when evaluating a potential board member at the firm, according to two people with knowledge of the bank’s decision who were unable to discuss it publicly because of the confidential nature of the move.
The decision is a result of a deal that Goldman struck with the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit group that has been pressuring numerous companies to drop diversity, equity and inclusion mandates, the people said.
The group recently announced similar deals with American Express and the equipment manufacturer Deere & Co.
As part of its agreement with Goldman, the National Legal and Policy Center, which has a small investment in the bank, withdrew a shareholder proposal demanding that diversity criteria for the board be dropped. The deal was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Goldman’s move is part of a broader retreat by corporate America to shun diversity mandates during the Trump administration. The White House claims many of these initiatives amount to discrimination against white workers and job applicants.
For years, Goldman’s chief executive officer, David Solomon, had been a vocal champion of the bank’s commitment to overhauling its traditionally white, male-dominated work force.
In March 2019, Mr. Solomon, his top deputy John Waldron and the firm’s then-chief financial officer, Stephen M. Scherr, declared diversity and inclusion “a top priority.”
“When we unite around a common goal, we make progress together,” the men wrote in an email to the staff. They said they would “improve each year” toward goals that included a new recruiting class comprising “50 percent women, 11 percent Black professionals and 14 percent Hispanic/Latino professionals in the Americas, and 9 percent Black professionals in the U.K.”
The following year Mr. Solomon said that Goldman Sachs would no longer take a company public in the United States or Europe unless it had at least one “diverse” board member. By 2021, a company would need at least two diverse board members in order for Goldman to agree to work on its initial public offering.
But since President Trump took office, the political and legal winds on diversity have shifted, and Goldman’s commitment to D.E.I. has shifted, too.
Last year, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began questioning the hiring practices at elite law firms, claiming that their efforts to recruit Black and Hispanic lawyers may have potentially discriminated against white candidates. More recently, the agency said it was investigating “systemic allegations of D.E.I.-related intentional race discrimination” against white employees and job applicants at Nike. The sportswear company said it has been complying with the E.E.O.C.’s inquiry.
Even before Mr. Trump began his second term, some diversity initiatives were facing legal scrutiny. In late 2024, a federal appeals court said Nasdaq’s rules that set racial and diversity targets for boards that listed on its exchange were invalid.
In February 2025, Goldman said it would drop the policy that required boards of directors of U.S. companies to include women and members of minority groups if the bank were to serve as an underwriter on their initial public offerings. The same month, the firm scrapped the explicit goals it had earlier set for the racial and gender make up of its recruiting classes.
“It doesn’t change our strong belief that successful boards benefit from diverse backgrounds and perspectives,” a Goldman spokeswoman, Jennifer Zuccarelli, said of the recent moves.
Goldman’s board is expected to move forward with the change to the diversity criteria for potential board members when it meets this week, the two people with knowledge of the matter said. The meeting will be the board’s first since it convened last week to consider the resignation of Goldman’s general counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, who said she was stepping down after revelations emerged about her extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
At the bank’s annual shareholder meeting last year, the National Legal and Policy Center’s associate director, Luke Perlot, praised Goldman for having “taken meaningful steps to roll back its D.E.I. programs.”
Still, he proposed that the bank eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion goals around compensation for its named executive officers. On that point, the bank’s board recommended against dropping those compensation goals, and fewer than 5 percent of shareholders voted in favor eliminating them.
Maureen Farrell writes about Wall Street for The Times, focusing on private equity, hedge funds and billionaires and how they influence the world of investing.
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