Goldman Sachs’ executive Stephanie Cohen, global head of its platform solutions division, resigns. Stephanie Cohen of Goldman Sachs becomes one more executive to depart the Wall Street giant on Monday after a series of senior exits.
An investment banking star Stephanie Cohen, who was once thought to be a candidate to become the first female CEO of Goldman Sachs, announced Monday she is leaving after a 25-year career at the firm joining an exodus of women at the beleaguered Wall Street giant in recent months.
Stephanie Cohen role at Cloudflare
Cohen is taking a new role at cloud services company Cloudflare as its first chief strategy officer after taking a leave of absence from Goldman in June. She was initially expected to return to Goldman, according to a source familiar with the situation who declined to be identified. Cohen did not respond to a phone call requesting comment.
Goldman is scaling down its consumer operations after the business, previously championed by CEO David Solomon, lost billions.
Goldman Sachs executives resigns
Stephanie Cohen resigning is the latest high-profile departure from Goldman. Global banking and markets co-head Jim Esposito, asset management executive Julian Salisbury and Dina Powell McCormick, former head of the sovereign business, are among the other big names to have left the bank in recent months.
Cohen was the only woman to lead one of the bank’s main businesses. Beth Hammack, the co-head of its global financing group who was once considered as a candidate to become chief financial officer, announced her departure last month.
The two women were part of the bank’s 25-person management committee, which has six remaining female members. Of the bank’s top eight executive officers, two are women.
Stephanie Cohen resigns
Stephanie Cohen resigns in the face of professed claims by Goldman CEO David Solomon to promote more women to senior positions at the bank.
“Advancing women into our most senior ranks is an area where we have not accomplished our goals,” Solomon said in a statement. “We are very fortunate to have extraordinary female partners that continue to increase… Our longer-term success depends significantly on developing female partners in senior roles.”
Goldman Sachs “a boys club”
Goldman’s reputation as a boys club was further reinforced last May when the bank agreed to pay $215 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed more than a decade ago by female staffers who alleged gender-based pay discrimination as well as sexual harassment.
Solomon is scheduled to host several women partners for a dinner on Monday during which it is expected that they will discuss the dearth of females at the bank’s upper echelons, the Journal reported.
As per a report, two-thirds of women who made partner by the end of 2018 were no longer with the firm.
Beth Hammack, one of Goldman’s most prolific traders in her three decades at the bank, was recently passed over for the chief financial officer position, which went to Denis Coleman.
Last year, Dina Powell McCormick, the former Trump administration official and veteran executive at Goldman Sachs, left the firm to help run BDT & MSD Partners, a merchant bank founded by two other ex-Goldman stars Byron Trott and Gregg Lemkau.
None of the executives who are considered credible candidates to one day succeed Solomon are women.
By comparison, just under half of men who made partner at around the same time have since left Goldman, according to the analysis.
Stephanie Cohen achievements
In 2017, Cohen was promoted to chief strategy officer at Goldman. Three years later, she was picked to co-head the consumer and wealth management unit – one of the few women to lead a major division within the bank.
Stephanie Cohen, who joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in 1999 and was promoted to partner 2014, ran the bank’s consumer and fintech operations, an internal memo showed.
