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Goldman to Refuse IPOs If All Directors Are White, Straight Men
- samdung 7y agoOk. I'm lost here. What if it's a multi-colored board but all are straight?
- oarsinsync 7y agoThe article wording suggests that's fine: > Wall Street's biggest underwriter of initial public offerings in the U.S. will no longer take a company public in the U.S. and Europe if it lacks a director who is either female or diverse. If I've understood correctly, the requirement is: NOT (ethnicity=caucasian AND gender=male AND orientation=hetrosexual) EDIT: Ignore my above, it suggests that no white straight males are acceptable, which is incorrect. See comment below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22137842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22137842)
- ForHackernews 7y agoThe requirement is NOT (ALL(d.ethnicity=caucasian AND d.gender=male AND d.orientation=hetrosexual for d in directors)) It's not like Goldman won't do business with any company with straight white men on their board.
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- johndevor 7y agoHow do we know if a board of people are straight or gay? Does everyone have to be out of the closet?
- HenryKissinger 7y agoSo long, Goldman. It was nice knowing you.
- oarsinsync 7y agoUnlikely, given Blackrock and State Street are apparently leading the way. From the article: > The mandate is the latest in a series of signals that non-diverse boards and management are unacceptable. BlackRock Inc. and State Street Global Advisors are voting against directors at companies without a female director. BlackRock AUM: ~$6.9T, State Street AUM: ~$2.8T, Goldman Sachs AUM: ~$1.5T. (Morgan Stanley AUM ~$2T, JPM ~$2.6T)
- djohnston 7y agoThat sounds like a lawsuit. Sex, race, AND sexual orientation? Goldman hit the trifecta
- oarsinsync 7y agoExcept at least one of those is now enshrined in California law. From the article: > Public companies with all-male boards based in California now face a $100,000 fine under a new state law.
- djohnston 7y agoA Google search indicates California is currently being sued for that law on the ground that it violates equal protection, which seems obvious.
- oarsinsync 7y agoIt'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Intellectually, this isn't really any different to affirmative action (enforcing opportunities for long time discriminated against classes), which has ultimately been approved by the supreme court.
- fs2 7y agoExcept this is not about enforcing opportunities for a certain group but to prevent a group certain privileges based on their skin color and sexual orientation. Discrimination is not right because you think you have the right motives, the law is also very clear about this.
- jjoonathan 7y agoDoesn't federal contracting explicitly favor people on the basis of being female / minority / veteran? It always seems that the people who make the rules get to break the rules, so long as they can string together a plausible argument, which is a very low bar.
- brighton36 7y agoHow do they plan on verifying orientation?
- egdod 7y agoOr even race, for that matter. What if you have someone who’s 1/1024th diverse like Elizabeth Warren? What if you have someone who’s “transracial”?
- thu2111 7y agoSocial media and public pronouncements, probably. This sort of misandrist heterophobia isn't entirely new. I encountered an organisation with the same "no straight white men" policy and the way they did it was by insisting you present evidence of your sexual orientation from Facebook or similar. Really.
- brighton36 7y agoThat's completely insane.
- bilekas 7y agoBut what about the KKK and NRA's board ? Oh the humanity Also: Very cool to see diversity issues finally influencing money.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoKill your self if you think this is good.
- oarsinsync 7y agoI dont think a 501(c)(4) can IPO, and even if it could, it would probably not be tax efficient to do so. Similar considerations probably apply to the various chapters of the KKK (it's not a single organisation) too. (I realise your comment wasn't serious, but this is a serious forum, so have a serious response.)
- bilekas 7y agoFair enough. The article was amusing though. The comment was more so to highlight the equivalence of the KKK and a board with only white, straight males, which would suggest the board have a : 'sexual disposition' requirement in the application. But okay, lets be serious.
- matty_boy 7y agoNRA can hire Bruno on to their board.
- wakeywakeywakey 7y agoWhat about Caucasian immigrants? Does my white privilege counterbalance my immigrant struggle?
- thrower123 7y agoI'm afraid we're not far off from having to formalize some sort of numerical Diversity Score. Determining position on the totem pole is becoming too complicated.
- dextralt 7y agoSorry, but no. You may be descendant of Eastern European serfs, you still carry the blood guilt.
- busymom0 7y agoI hope this is sarcastic.
- keanzu 7y agoHas it gotten so bad that you genuinely can't tell? I'm confident that it was a joke. Want some satire where it is difficult enough to tell that a number of people have been taken in? https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath
- nscalf 7y agoHas there been any studies to determine that a diverse board is actually valuable? I'm genuinely asking, because I subscribe to the "get the best people for the job" theory of doing things. I find it to be racist/sexist/whatever discriminatory word applies to have a hard line in the opposite. In my experience, forced diversity is a good way to shoe horn people into roles they won't be successful in. None of that is to say that there isn't discrimination, but there is not an equal distribution of individuals in each field.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> any studies to determine that a diverse board is actually valuable? At least for gender, the evidence is mixed [1]. It’s a complicated question. For example, the evidence is compelling for French companies [2]. [1] https://hbr.org/2019/03/when-and-why-diversity-improves-your-boards-performance https://hbr.org/2019/03/when-and-why-diversity-improves-your... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378426617302972 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784...
- nscalf 7y agoAhh that's really interesting, thanks for sharing!
- notacoward 7y agoAlso... https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2018/01/25/more-evidence-that-company-diversity-leads-to-better-profits https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2018/01/25/more-... https://www.fcltglobal.org/news/blog/article/2019/05/28/data-shows-that-diverse-boards-create-more-value https://www.fcltglobal.org/news/blog/article/2019/05/28/data...
- thu2111 7y agoThe PDF for the second paper can be found here: http://iranarze.ir/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/E8806-IranArze.pdf http://iranarze.ir/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/E8806-IranArze... There are quite a few problems with this sort of social science study that make it hard to draw any conclusions. You can't simply see mixed answers and say there's mixed evidence, because such answers aren't evidence to begin with. A first problem is the standard correlation/causation fallacy. If a company that appoints women to the board is doing better is that because of the benign influence of the woman, or is it the inverse, that companies doing well feel they can appoint a token woman without running much risk? Or alternatively that women are only attracted to the sorts of low-risk companies that already do well, and thus success breeds women rather than vice-versa? Or much more likely still that it's irrelevant and there's something else at work? A second problem is confounding factors. Many studies don't even acknowledge them, let alone control for them. This paper does better than most: it recognises that some studies are confounded because they compare companies across countries that vary in mandatory-women-on-boards-laws, which is a variant of the above problem. It selects a single country and a timeframe when (they assert) there was no social pressure to appoint women to boards. But this paper is nonetheless still ultimately a pure correlation = causation argument. A third problem is small sample sizes. This paper claims to use a "large" sample but it's only a little under 400 firms. This is far too small to draw meaningful conclusions from, partly because (again) it's too small a set to control for confounding factors. Yet they claim it's statistically significant. A fourth problem is social scientists are very bad at stopping when they seem to be measuring noise. The paper says: For the various attributes, we find female directors who are foreigners, have business training, and with longer tenure significantly negatively correlate with all performance measures. However, female directors’ reputation measured by their media coverage is positively perceived by market investors and is associated with an improvement of ROA and ROE. (ROA is return on assets, ROE is return on equity). These sentences make a highly implausible claim, namely, the study authors are able to explain movements of the stock market by measuring "reputation" via "media coverage". Moreover that women with more experience and business training are seen as less capable by investors. But in any other context I think most people would agree that reliably explaining the movement of stocks is extremely difficult, especially for something as abstract and long term as a change of board members. Has a major stock ever had a large movement because a non-chairperson role on a corporate board changed? I'm struggling to think of one. If these authors were really capable of analysing corporate performance in such detailed ways, surely they'd choose to become very successful investors instead of writing gender studies papers? This sort of study is pretty common and these days I just write it off. It's not so much a problem with this specific subject but more that there is far too much research being done on a dodgy basis. Vast numbers of pseudo-scientists aren't able to step back and say "we aren't able to model this, we don't know the answer to that question". You get studies that sound clever but are just reporting random results.
- humanrebar 7y agoFor the purposes of this discussion, do Asians and Jews count as "not diverse"? It's hard to keep track sometimes.
- jjoonathan 7y agoI think to be maximally inclusive, Asians get a negative diversity score, right? /s. This is whack.
- christiansakai 7y agoWe are dime a dozen lol.
- vidanay 7y agoOr a hundred per Yen depending on the exchange rate.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoYou should expect the anti-white sentiment to formally mutate to include Chinese/Japanese/Koreans in the future, as they aren't global south enough. (I mean, it already has in college admissions.)
- superkuh 7y agoIt's sad to see these kinds of discriminatory practices. Especially when they're backed up with the use of government force. We were supposed to be moving away from judging people based on their skin and sexual preferences.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Especially when they're backed up with the use of government force Goldman Sachs?
- superkuh 7y agoNah, the California law that would fine them unless they do this.
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- keanzu 7y ago“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. 1963
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- claudeganon 7y agoI’m at the point now where I’m pretty sure neoliberal-types do this on purpose to push people towards bigotry. No leftist with any coherency to their politics would advocate Goldman Sachs do this (let alone even exist). Anyway, always worth revisiting the Fields’ sisters book, “Racecraft” about how racial identity is not inherent to people, but imposed as post hoc justification for the socioeconomic order: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/233136/racecraft-by-karen-e-fields-and-barbara-j-fields/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/233136/racecraft-by...
- m0xte 7y agoWhatever happened to merit?
- jessaustin 7y agoTFA is about corporate boards.
- dextralt 7y agogoogle 'github meritocracy' TLDR, meritocracy is now considered to be a far-right concept.
- Stubb 7y agoWas discussing this with a pal yesterday: blockchain-based IPOs just got a whole lot more interesting.
- Bantros 7y agoThe world we live in
- EdwardDiego 7y agoGoldman Sachs makes token motions towards diversity in an attempt to redeem themselves several years after shitting the US economy. Not sure being "woke" makes up for fucking the US economy, but hey, Twitter seems to bear a disproportionate weight, so I'm not the best arbiter of value. But this seems like blatant window dressing from a predatory firm.
- emilfihlman 7y agoWhat. The. Fuck. This is literally insane as a "law" and erodes trust in law.
- rzmnzm 7y agoWow, sexist and racist.
- swebs 7y agoWeird that this is just targeting Europe and North America when they have offices in all major financial centers around the world. All Asian board in Asia? Fine. All African board in Africa? Fine. All European board in Europe? No! That's unacceptable for some reason.
- oarsinsync 7y agoThere are a number of female Europeans, as well as non-white Europeans, who may object to your definition that they are not Europeans.
- swebs 7y agoJust prepend "straight, male, ethnic-" to the beginning of each statement. Getting into a pedantic sidetrack isn't helpful. The point remains that there is a crazy double standard going on.
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- proximitysauce 7y agoA true commitment to diversity would see them putting poor people on the board. A rich person of a different color, gender or sexual orientation is still a rich person. I don’t see this making any kind of material impact on company behavior.
- turk73 7y agoSo sick of this garbage. White people are not the bane of society, far from it. Clown world. I grew up pretty damn poor. Anyone that looked at me as a kid would have said I had no future at all. I picked myself up and worked hard, sacrificed good times, and cut as many financial corners as I could for too many years. It's been a fucking grind. Regardless of my skin color, it was no cake walk, I felt very little "privilege" as the accusation goes. It was just work, endless work. Especially bad was coming behind the Boomer generation that absolutely hated my guts just for being young. You might say mentors were few and far between and every time I reached out, I got my hand slapped. I was looked at (and still am looked at) as a labor commodity and little else. Also, it is truly hilarous to me that Goldman Sachs, the bank that the US Govt. BAILED OUT during the financial crisis, a bank largely run mostly by people of a certain ethnicity, has any moral standing whatsoever. These fools should be out of business for what they did, not laying down this crap! Also BlackRock--what a POS company that is! They came in to a well regarded local firm and absolutely gutted it. Want to know why? PENSIONS. They had to get rid of anyone with a pension, so they did all kinds of miserable fuckery to pull that off.
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- hurricanetc 7y agoDiscrimination is discrimination no matter how you dress it up.
- corporate_shi11 7y agoAnd yet a board of all women, all black men, etc. would be celebrated. This is pure racism and sexism. Unfortunately we live in an age when "white people" and men are unjustly blamed for many things, and the confluence of this blaming culture leads to the demonization of white men. This demonization is encouraged by many in the media, academia and HR departments. It masquerades as virtuous and "progressive" when it is just the opposite. People are reluctant to call it out for what it is because they are afraid of being slandered as racist or sexist. Policies like Goldman's, while well intended, are ultimately regressive, racist and sexist. When we reduce individuals to their race and gender we fall farther back into the dark ages when these things mattered far more than they do now. Rather than running away from that time towards a world of equality and universal justice, these policies drag us back and breed only resentment and mutual distrust.
- dextralt 7y ago>a world of equality and universal justice >resentment and mutual distrust which of these goals do you think an entity like Goldman Sachs is more likely to pursue?
- theredbox 7y agoThis is sickening bullshit. I grew dirt poor in Eastern Europe. Some disadvantaged african-american minorities would be considered rich here.
- notacoward 7y agoIn case anyone's wondering, Goldman Sachs itself does seem to have pretty decent representation on the board, executive team, and management committee (which AIUI is the real power at that type of company). At least as regards women. I see one black board member and one black MC member, same for Asians, and no indication of gender/sexual preference. You can look for yourself here. https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/leadership/board-of-directors/index.html https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/leadership/board-of-di...
- forgetfulusr 7y agoWow, if they even wanted this to be taken seriously they could have just included everyone in on it. Why just this specific class? Refuse anyone that has <same race><same gender><same orientation> on the board. That would have got me atleast thinking about diversity. This just sounds ridiculous.
- simonsarris 7y agoThis is an extension of the California law to require companies to have women on boards that happened in 2018 which already potentially doubles some board sizes, though I'm not sure how its played out so far. Anything that forcibly makes boards larger is probably bad for companies, regardless of the goodness of intentions. If you do not believe requirements like Goldman's will increase board sizes, then you must believe that all companies are willing to fire some number of current board members to meet quota, which seems unlikely. Peter Thiel in Zero to One: > A board of three is ideal. Your board should never exceed five people, unless your company is publicly held. (Government regulations effectively mandate that public companies have larger boards—the average is nine members.) By far the worst you can do is to make your board extra large. When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small. More board members may increase intransigence, decrease oversight (cover over who is really making the decisions and who is not), and turn corps more bureaucratic. Regardless of who is joining the board, this is going to increase board sizes, and that's pretty unfortunate for some philosophies of effective management. It is not that [xyz] representation isn't a problem, but that an effective company structure must be the foremost requirement, ahead of any other (more arbitrary or ephemeral) requirements. Or else there won't be as many great companies to steward in the first place.
- christiansakai 7y agoNot sure if I will get down-voted with this opinion, blamed for turning a blind eye for a social issue. But I grew up in Asia (I am Asian). My ethnicity is also a minority there. I came to the US 10 years ago, and had some cultural shock regarding racial and diversity issues. First, my jokes were mostly offensive to people here. We grew up making jokes about marital status and body image. We told people things like "you're so fat, you need to lose weight", and "why are you still single?" and no one was ever offended. Little did I know that things are different here. But, the second one was quite surprising. I had a conversation to a female friend. She was telling me that she wanted to go to a business school. I asked why business school, and her another female friend immediately intervened and answered angrily "oh why not? because she is female?" and I was like "what just happened?" because I was confused. That was one instance, and there were other instances where I was accused of "mansplaining". I had to google what that keyword was because I thought I encountered a new English word that I didn't know that I need to add to my vocabulary. Also during my conversation with (mostly Asian) friends here , they sometimes brought the topic of "Bamboo Ceiling" and I was honestly didn't know what was that about until I googled it. To be honest (and this is where I think I would be down-voted), I've never experienced such a thing called "Bamboo Ceiling" or I have to be white to be successful (well, the definition of successful varies between people) and I just go on with my life as usual, thinking that such ceiling is just some imaginary ceiling made by my (mostly Asian) friends. But I do aware of the impact of diversity programs against Asians. We're dime a dozen lol.
- busymom0 7y agoLet me preface my comment by mentioning something which shouldn't matter but this news requires it - I am brown. This is one of the stupidest things I have seen come out of the people who think force diversity is a good thing. Why can't we simply treat people by their character and merit instead of things like race, sex or sexual orientation when those things have nothing to do with whether you can run a business or not? This rule is the definition of racism and sexism. Also how exactly do they plan on figuring out whether someone is straight or not? As a brown immigrant, I have seen a lot more racism towards white people than others. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. 1963
- keanzu 7y ago> I am brown "If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice." "We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice" -Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts 7th You have been found guilty of wrongthink, please report to the Ministry of Truth for reeducation.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. The GP's comment was fine for HN because it was grounded in specific personal experience. This comment is bad for HN because it's just inflammatory talking points. Please don't do those here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Custergus 7y agoWhat constitutes minority? Elizabeth Warren claimed it at around 7%. Obama could play this game either way at 50/50, and if the public restroom standard holds you can claim whatever gender you identify with at the moment. And must a female director resign after a transgender procedure? The world is going mad.
- apta 7y agoConfusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome I see, amateur mistake.
- fairenough42 7y agoPerhaps not a mistake at all. Maybe it's been the point all along but it took a while to get there.
- apta 7y agoWhat are they getting out of it other than making themselves look foolish?
- tuyguntn 7y agothis is bullshit, why CEO can't hire person who is best for the job by her/his own definition of best? Definition of best is determined by person who is hiring. Can white-man now sue company for racism because board of directors didn't hire him? Does this mean, now minorities are considered as an elite group of people? P.S. I tried to remember when I last time looked at sex of job applicant. Couldn't remember any case, now I should be careful and reject white man (just in case)