Goldman Sachs has ended its policy requiring IPO clients to have diverse boards, citing a legal ruling that ended a similar initiative at the Nasdaq.

Goldman Sachs cancelled a four-year-old policy to only take public companies that had two diverse board members, a spokesperson for the bank said on Tuesday, in the latest such move by corporations expecting greater scrutiny on social policies from U.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is killing a significant pledge it made to refuse initial public offering business with companies that had all White, male boards.

Goldman Sachs is ending its policy that mandated companies have a diverse board for the bank to take them public. The rule, a version of which was implemented in 2020, had said the bank would only underwrite the initial public offerings for companies in the U.

Goldman Sachs has dropped its IPO board diversity requirement due to legal challenges and political scrutiny, though it will continue encouraging diverse leadership, The Financial Times reports.

Goldman Sachs has ended a ban on underwriting companies with all-White, all-male boards, becoming the latest corporate giant to scale back a DEI initiative.

Diversity standards at Goldman and Nasdaq were powerful—but are now gone.

Goldman Sachs' vice chair has said the bank ditched an internal diversity rule that barred it from advising all male, all white boards on company flotations because it was no longer needed. The investment bank had pledged that it would only help a business sell its shares on a stock exchange if it had two board members that satisfied diversity requirements,