Wall Street ‘old boys club’ lets in more women

The investment bank says almost half of its new partners will come from diverse backgrounds.

Goldman Sachs has frequently come under fire for its “boy’s club” mentality, promoting mostly white men to senior roles.

Becoming partner at the investment bank is seen as entry into one of Wall Street’s most exclusive clubs.

Goldman’s partners collectively own a small stake in the firm and get a pay rise to a basic salary of $950,000 (£724,000).

On top of this, they also get exclusive access to the bank’s private investment funds and a share of future profits from them.

However, the number of employees it has made partner this year has fallen to its lowest level in decades.

A total of 60 staff will join the exclusive club, which the investment bank says is a result of a “highly selective process to identify each new generation of Goldman Sachs senior leaders”.

Goldman Sachs said 16 of the 60 were women, while four were black, three Hispanic and 10 Asian. A total of 32 were white men.

Chief executive David Solomon has said he wants to move faster to increase diversity among the bank’s senior ranks.

“We continue to advance diversity and inclusion at our firm,” a Goldman Sachs spokesman said after announcing the new partners.

Earlier this year, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Goldman Sachs pledged $10m towards a fund for racial equality.

Goldman Sachs is hoping to put a recent scandal behind it, following its involvement in Malaysia’s 1MDB state fund.

The bank has paid out more than $5bn in settlements across the world including the US, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Last month, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay nearly $3bn to end a probe of its role in the corruption scandal.

The bank’s Malaysian subsidiary admitted in US court that it had paid more than $1bn in bribes to win work raising money for the Malaysian state-owned wealth fund.