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Goldman Sachs has abandoned a pledge to take public companies with only a certain number of diverse board members, underlining the increasingly tough environment in the US on diversity programs.
Wall Street Bank had said in 2020 that it would work on a public bid of a company in the US or Western Europe only if there were at least one diverse board member, widely defined as a non -white man. A year later this request was raised for two diverse board members, one of which was a woman.
The investment bank is now rolling it back. A Goldman spokesman referred to a recent US court ruling that dropped NASDAQ for companies to publicly discover board diversity statistics each year.
“As a result of legal developments regarding the demands of board diversity, we ended our official board diversity policy,” Goldman said in a statement. “We continue to believe that successful boards benefit from different backgrounds and perspectives, and we will encourage them to take this approach.”
Goldman is one of the main investment banks in the business of getting public companies. Her request was first from a Wall Street bank and was a visible step that reflected the push at that time for greater diversity in high corporate leadership positions under the flag of diversity, equality and inclusion programs.
However, Dei’s push has faced a reaction in the last few months which has become stronger after the win of Donald Trump’s choice. While Goldman has retained his goals of internal diversity, a number of companies have supported their Dei goals.
Goldman had set up a dedicated team to help companies meet his diversity requirements, and the bank plans to keep it in the country to help the source of diverse board candidates.
Goldman’s decision to restore the request was reported earlier by Bloomberg.
