Goldman Sachs to drop DEI criteria from board candidate selection

Goldman Sachs is moving to pull race, gender identity, sexual orientation and other diversity-related factors out of how its board screens candidates, a shift that says as much about the current political climate as it does about board governance. The change would narrow the governance committee’s formal selection framework at a moment when banks are trying to look less exposed on DEI while still protecting the reputational value of broad, well-connected boards.

The bank’s board process had used four main criteria, including a diversity category defined broadly enough to cover viewpoints, backgrounds, professional experience and military service. That wording matters. Goldman is not just dropping an internal policy label; it is signaling that the language around representation has become a liability, especially for a firm that recruits aggressively from top schools, sells itself on meritocracy and still competes for talent that watches these signals closely.

Pressure had been building from outside. In September 2025, National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative activist nonprofit and small Goldman shareholder, asked the firm to remove DEI criteria from its board-selection process. Goldman told the group it planned to revise the criteria itself, and the proposal was withdrawn. The bank declined to comment on the report. The move would follow an earlier pruning of Goldman’s public DEI footprint, including the removal of a full diversity-and-inclusion section from its 2025 annual filing in February 2025 after the expiration of its five-year aspirational hiring and representation goals.

Goldman has also been backing away from hard board-diversity requirements elsewhere. The firm previously required companies it advised on initial public offerings to have at least two diverse board members, including one woman, a rule it had expanded from an earlier 2020 policy under which David Solomon said Goldman would not take companies public unless there was at least one diverse board candidate, with a plan to move to two in 2021. That is a real operational change for capital-markets teams, not just a branding tweak: it affects how bankers frame governance expectations to clients and how much leverage Goldman is willing to exert on portfolio companies and IPO issuers.

The backdrop is legal as well as political. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated the SEC’s approval of Nasdaq’s board-diversity rules in a 9-8 decision on Dec. 11, 2024, weakening the legal footing for mandatory board-diversity standards. Goldman’s own 2025 annual report, filed in March 2026, showed why the firm can afford to be more selective in what it emphasizes publicly: net revenues rose 9 percent to $58.3 billion, earnings per share climbed 27 percent to $51.32 and return on equity reached 15.0 percent. The message to employees and clients is clear: Goldman is keeping the board broad, but it is no longer making DEI part of the formal test.