Goldman Sachs Drops Board DEI Criteria as Diversity Disclosure Plummets Across S&P 500

Goldman Sachs Drops Board DEI Criteria as Diversity Disclosure Plummets Across S&P 500

Goldman Sachs has eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion criteria for its board of directors, according to a report published February 18, marking the latest retreat from corporate diversity commitments amid mounting legal and political pressure.

The move comes roughly a year after the Wall Street giant scrapped diversity goals for its broader workforce. Goldman CEO David Solomon has not publicly commented on the board policy change, which follows a pattern of companies quietly abandoning DEI frameworks while insisting their commitment to diverse hiring remains intact—just not in writing.

For CFOs and finance leaders, the shift carries particular weight: boards don't just set strategy and CEO pay packages, they manage succession planning and hold management accountable. The composition of who sits in those seats determines which questions get asked—and which blind spots persist.

The timing is notable. U.S. corporate boards have grown more diverse in recent years, with white men occupying fewer than half the board seats on Fortune 50 boards for the third consecutive year. Yet that progress appears to be stalling. The Conference Board reports that the number of S&P 500 companies disclosing directors' race and ethnicity has dropped dramatically, while ISS-Corporate found white men made up the majority of new directors in the S&P 500 for the first time since 2017.

Goldman's decision follows a wave of similar retreats across corporate America. Federal enforcement actions and state lawsuits targeting corporate DEI programs have prompted companies from Starbucks to competitors across industries to scrub diversity language from public documents. Starbucks won dismissal of a Missouri challenge to its DEI initiatives last week, only to face a new lawsuit in Florida.

The corporate messaging has become uniform: executives privately insist they remain committed to diverse hiring and inclusive workplaces, citing research showing diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones. They just don't want to say so publicly anymore.

Costco CEO Ron Vachris stands as a conspicuous exception, continuing to publicly affirm the retailer's diversity commitments even as rivals have scaled back.

The business case for board diversity, meanwhile, has arguably never been stronger. A staggering number of women are leaving the U.S. workforce, many citing caregiving costs and responsibilities. One CEO interviewed for the Fortune report noted that childcare and workplace flexibility only became regular topics in boardroom talent discussions after a third woman joined their board—precisely the kind of operational blind spot that homogeneous boards risk missing.

The question facing finance leaders is whether the legal and political risks of maintaining explicit diversity criteria now outweigh the strategic risks of losing diverse perspectives in the room where succession plans get made and compensation gets set. Goldman Sachs, it appears, has made its calculation. The firm did not respond to requests for comment on whether it plans to track board diversity through other means or what criteria will replace DEI considerations in director recruitment.