Goldman Sachs will significantly promote partners this year, with the number possibly reaching a new high since the Solomon era

According to sources familiar with the matter, Goldman Sachs plans to conduct a large-scale promotion of partners this year, with the number of promotions expected to reach the highest since David Solomon took over as CEO.

Unlike other Wall Street financial institutions, Goldman Sachs has retained its pre-IPO partnership tradition, with partner status being its highest level. Currently, the group has slightly more than 400 partners, accounting for less than 1% of its total employees. Goldman Sachs promotes partners every two years, with the last promotion in 2022 seeing 80 employees elevated to partner, the highest record since Solomon took the helm in 2018.

Analysts believe that this large-scale promotion reflects a shift in Solomon's governance model, as he emphasized shortly after taking office that reducing the partner pool was an ideal outcome to enhance the "incentive" of the title. In his first month in office, the bank selected 69 new partners, followed by only 60 in 2020, the lowest number since Goldman Sachs went public in 1999.

However, since then, Goldman Sachs has begun to expand its partner ranks, partly to replenish the loss of partners due to executives leaving the banking industry for higher-paying positions. Additionally, the bank faces the issue of gender imbalance at its senior levels, and even though the new partner group is more diverse, the smaller partner pool still struggles to address this issue. As of the beginning of this year, the proportion of women among partners was less than one-fifth, with men still dominating.

The largest partner promotion in Goldman Sachs' history occurred in 2006, when 115 people were selected to join the partner ranks