Goldman Sachs canceled a four-year-old policy to only take public companies that had two diverse board members, a spokesperson for the bank said Tuesday, in the latest such move by corporations expecting greater scrutiny on social policies from U.S. President Donald Trump.
"As a result of legal developments related to board diversity requirements, we ended our formal board diversity policy," Goldman Sachs spokesperson Tony Fratto said.
"We continue to believe that successful boards benefit from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and we will encourage them to take this approach," Fratto added.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has issued a series of executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government and the private sector.
In 2020, Goldman announced that it would only take public a company in the United States or Western Europe if at least one of its board directors counted as diverse, usually understood as being from a demographic historically under-represented in corporate America.
In 2021 it raised this to two diverse board members, one of whom had to be a woman.
The move toward boardroom diversity was slowing in the United States before Trump took power, as a conservative backlash against DEI policies in the workplace sapped enthusiasm that mounted after the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
© 2025 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.