- Goldman Sachs on Thursday promoted 95 executives to its partnership.
- It’s the largest class to be promoted under David Solomon since he took over as CEO in 2018.
- A record 26 are women — a closely watched group after a series of high-profile female partner exits.
Goldman Sachs on Thursday dropped the names of its newest partner class, elevating 95 members to its highest designation of leaders outside the C-suite.
The 2024 class is the largest since David Solomon took over as CEO in 2018 and reflects the bank’s growth expectations in dealmaking and asset and wealth management.
This year’s class is also one of Goldman’s most diverse, representing a record 26 females and a record level of Hispanic executive promotions, a company executive said on Thursday.
“A spirit of partnership has been at the heart of Goldman Sachs’ culture for more than 155 years, with the firm’s partners exemplifying the best traditions of leadership,” Solomon and President and COO John Waldron said in a joint statement on Thursday.
The last time Goldman tapped new partners in 2022, it elevated 80 members. In the 2020 cycle, it appointed just 60 new partners, which helped reduce the size of the overall partnership to fewer than 440 members, down from 484 in 2018.
While the bank does not break out the size of its partnership at any given time, it has generally hovered around 400 to 450 members, representing less than 1% of Goldman’s workforce. As of the end of September, the Wall Street bank employed about 46,000 people, filings show.
Since taking the top job in 2018, Solomon has been shrinking the bank’s partnership ranks in a bid to increase its exclusivity. The Goldman executive said this year’s larger size isn’t an about-face from that goal, but rather a reflection of the firm’s commitment to its key businesses like investment banking and money management. The executive said that the total size of the class has remained largely constant even as the firm has grown under Solomon.
The bank has, in recent years, adjusted its course back to historic strengths like trading and advising on mergers, after it fumbled the ball on its consumer-banking ambitions. Goldman has also experienced a slew of high-profile partner exits driven, in part, by demand for its executives at high-paying hedge funds and other buy-side firms.
The process for becoming a partner is rigorous, requiring months of interviews across the firm in a process known internally as cross-ruffing, as Business Insider has reported.
The title, which opens the door to special perks and privileges, is a vestige of Goldman’s history as a private company run by its partners, who often contributed their own capital to deals. Goldman is now a publicly traded company, but its partners maintain influence over the strategic direction of the 150-year-old firm.
After several years of sluggish dealmaking across Wall Street, Goldman’s investment-banking fees — from advising on mergers to debt and stock underwriting — shot up 24% at the end of September versus the first nine months of 2023.
The bank has also grown its asset- and wealth-management business, with assets under supervision surging to more than $3 trillion for the first time at the end of the third quarter, fueled in part by growth in assets from high-net-worth clients.
Michael Kovac
Here are some key figures about Goldman’s 2024 partner class:
- 42% of the class started at Goldman as campus hires and 29% started as summer interns with the firm.
- The average tenure of the partner class is 16 years at Goldman Sachs.
- 26 promotes are women, or 27% of the class.
- The percentage of women promoted is not a record. In 2022, 23 women were promoted, representing 27% of the total class. (Goldman Sachs has seen a number of high-profile female exits in recent months, raising criticisms about the bank’s commitment to its female executives in an article published by the Wall Street Journal. Among the exits have been Beth Hammack, the former treasurer and an unsuccessful contender for chief financial officer; Stephanie Cohen, the former chief strategy officer and head of its platform solutions group; and Katie Koch, the former chief investment officer of its public-equity business in asset management. Executives have vowed to do better.)
- 6% of the class is Hispanic, another record.
- 18% are Asian.
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4% are Black, down from 7% in 2020. This is an area the Goldman executive acknowledged is a place the firm wants to improve.
Here’s the full list that Goldman released featuring all of its new partners.
Marine Abiad, Global Banking & Markets, Paris
Benny Adler, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Shahzad Ali, Controllers, New York
Ash Ang, Global Banking & Markets, Singapore
Lucia Arienti, Global Banking & Markets, London
Matthew Armas, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Patrick Armstrong, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Sebastian Ayton, Global Banking & Markets, Paris
Amitayush Bahri, Asset & Wealth Management, London
Rob Barlick Jr, Asset & Wealth Management, Miami
David Bear, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Amanda Beisel, Controllers, New York
Jeff Bernstein, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Lyla Bibi, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Anne Bizien, Global Banking & Markets, Paris
Tristan Blood, Asset & Wealth Management, London
Brittany Boals Moeller, Asset & Wealth Management, Atlanta
Marc Boheim, Asset & Wealth Management, London
Chris Bonner, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Kevin Boova, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Oonagh Bradley, Compliance, London
Timothy Braude, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Steven Budig, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Jacqueline Cassidy, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Sorubh Chandani, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Pamela Codo-Lotti, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Bracha Cohen, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Shaun Cullinan, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Marc d’Andlau, Global Banking & Markets, Paris
Adam Davis, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Matthew Doherty, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Jason Eisenstadt, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Ashley Everett, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Alex Finston, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Alison Flood, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Arvind Giridhar, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Ashwin Gupta, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Sonia Gupta, Global Banking & Markets, San Francisco
Terry Hagerty, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Robert Hamilton Kelly, Asset & Wealth Management, West Palm Beach
Axel Hoefer, Global Banking & Markets, Frankfurt
Dylan Hogarty, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Tim Holliday, Corporate Treasury, London
Kazuya Iketani, Global Banking & Markets, Tokyo
Sumedh Jaiswal, Global Banking & Markets, London
Kyle Jessen, Global Banking & Markets, San Francisco
Lotfi Karoui, Global Investment Research, New York
Feroz Khosla, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Larry Kleinman, Tax, New York
Jared Klyman, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Daniel Korich, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Rebecca Kruger, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Kosuke Kurosawa, Global Banking & Markets, Tokyo
Shane Lee, Global Banking & Markets, Calgary
Michael Leister, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Matthew Leskowitz, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Hilary Lopez, Asset & Wealth Management, London
Cedric Lucas, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Mazen Makarem, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Matthew Mason, Global Banking & Markets, Hong Kong
Jans Meckel, Global Banking & Markets, Paris
Patrick Moran, Legal, New York
Leonie Morel, Global Banking & Markets, London
John O’Connor, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Steve Orr, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Leke Osinubi, Engineering Division, New York
Elizabeth Overbay, Platform Solutions, New York
Jonathan Perry, Engineering Division, London
Thomas Plank, Global Banking & Markets, Singapore
Caitlin Pollak, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Ling Pong, Asset & Wealth Management, Hong Kong
Joe Porter, Global Banking & Markets, San Francisco
Vishaal Rana, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Alexandre Reinert, Global Banking & Markets, Hong Kong
Monique Rollins, Corporate Treasury, New York
Marcos Rosenberg, Asset & Wealth Management, Richardson
Marc Schaffer, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Jan Scheffel, Global Banking & Markets, London
Rahul Sharma, Engineering Division, Menlo Park
Eric Sheridan, Global Investment Research, New York
Salil Sheth, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Jonathan Shugar, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Alyson Shupe, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Aaron Siegel, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Adam Siegler, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Craig Smart, Global Banking & Markets, New York
Andre Souza, Global Banking & Markets, London
Thom Spoto, Asset & Wealth Management, West Palm Beach
Lesley Steele, Risk, London
Teppei Takanabe, Global Banking & Markets, Tokyo
Laura van Alkemade, Global Banking & Markets, London
Dennis Walsh, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Sylvia Yeh, Asset & Wealth Management, New York
Piotr Zurawski, Global Banking & Markets, London
This post is breaking and will be updated with additional information.
Emmalyse Brownstein contributed reporting.
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