Good morning! Podcaster Andrew Tate and brother sued for luring woman into sex work, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace makes House speech about assault, and DEI encounters another unceremonious end.
- Rule, reversed. In 2020, Goldman Sachs made a big splash by declaring the bank would refuse to take a company public if the business didn't have at least one board member considered "diverse" in some way—later upped to two. My colleague Claire Zillman reported from the World Economic Forum in Davos that year, where CEO David Solomon made the pledge. "IPOs are a pivotal moment for firms," he said at the time. Goldman was uniquely positioned to influence the direction companies headed in the years post-IPO.
Yesterday, that rule was the latest casualty of the 2025 DEI rollback and President Donald Trump's campaign against what he has called "illegal DEI." “As a result of legal developments related to board diversity requirements, we ended our formal board diversity policy," a Goldman spokesperson confirmed to Fortune. "We continue to believe that successful boards benefit from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and we will encourage them to take this approach."
The abandonment of Goldman's diversity-rule era comes after the end of a similar effort at Nasdaq. The stock exchange required listed companies to meet diversity standards or disclose why they didn't. But Nasdaq didn't have to end its rule this year; it was already struck down by a judge in December, a decision that other businesses closely watched. (Nasdaq declined to comment this week.)
Among all the diversity measures that companies have left in the dust over the past few weeks, these were two of the most powerful. Both Goldman and Nasdaq had influence far outside the reaches of their own organizations—and, for a time, used that influence to compel businesses to meet standards to create a more equitable world. The allure of a Goldman IPO or a Nasdaq listing was enough to get companies to meet diversity benchmarks. Besides perhaps the federal government's standards for federal contractors, these were two of the most powerful levers for diversity across the business world.
When California's board diversity mandate was overturned in 2022, some argued that the mandate had already achieved its desired impact—companies had updated their boards to meet its standards, so it didn't matter if its quota for board diversity was no longer in effect. But we're now staring down the long term of a world without any of these measures—even if Democrats were back in office tomorrow, companies would likely be hesitant to risk the political winds changing again. Already, we've seen how fast things can change. Although Goldman only confirmed the end of its rule yesterday, Bloomberg reports that the firm had already advised on IPOs this year for at least two businesses that didn't meet its two diverse board member requirement. Goldman says it will continue to run its board talent practice, which matches businesses with potential board members.
But meanwhile, as my colleague Sheryl Estrada reports, while some companies have ended diversity programs, many have, surprisingly, not fully abandoned their executive compensation structures that tied bonuses to hitting diversity and inclusion benchmarks. Like much of the DEI landscape, some of those pay structures are being described in different language, to relate to human capital or creating an inclusive environment, rather than diversity in hiring. Read Sheryl's full story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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