Goldman Sachs Promotes First Woman To Lead Investment Bank As CEO Strives To Meet ‘Diversity’ Goals

Just weeks after Citigroup named the first female CEO to lead a Wall Street megabank, Goldman Sachs has announced the elevation of a handful of female MDs to leadership positions as the ‘Vampire Squid’ seeks to burnish its ‘woke’ credentials.

One of the most high-profile moves is the promotion of MD Kim Posnett, 43, to become the first female co-head of investment-banking. She’s the first woman to lead the operation, as well as the youngest person to hold the role.

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Posnett

GS will also promote Christina Minnis to co-head of global credit finance, alongside Michael Marsh, who was also recently promoted. Akila Raman will become the COO of the global financing group and Miriam Wheeler head of Americas real estate financing.

“Diversity” is a top priority for CEO David Solomon, who has a goal of shifting the composition of the bank’s executives to 40% women.

This isn’t the bank’s first attempt at virtue-signaling: Goldman made headlines earlier this year when the bank announced it wouldn’t do IPOs for companies that don’t have at least one “diverse” candidate on their board.

Its research department recently published a ‘study’ claiming women-led mutual funds outperform funds led by men, without explaining that such a small sample size makes a comparison like this essentially useless. And it’s not like the difference was all that extreme: 43% of women-led funds (that is, funds with at least one female PM) outperformed their benchmarks, while 41% of male-led funds outperformed. Of the nearly 500 funds the bank incorporated into its research, only 63 were designated “woman-led”.

Of course, the bank still promoted plenty of mem during this latest shake-up. For example, the firm picked Stephan Feldgoise and Mark Sorrell to co-lead the global M&A business, while its equity-capital markets business will be run by David Ludwig, who will serve as its global head, while Gabe Gelman and Simon Watson will co-lead the business in the Americas. Those promotions come amid a booming year for IPOs, even if M&A deal volume has slowed.

The promotions are a great distraction. Perhaps if the bank proves it’s ‘woke’ enough, the DoJ will back off on its demands that Goldman make a criminal plea to settle allegations related to the 1MDB probe (settlement talks are still ongoing in the US, though the bank has  settled the issue in Malaysia with a massive payout).