Beth Hammack is considered one of the most likely candidates to join Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s all-male top ranks.
She has now announced her resignation after 30 years at the Wall Street giant, according to people familiar with the matter.
Hammack, 52, had been viewed internally as the top choice to be the next chief financial officer – a rarity for a woman to hold one of the bank’s most senior positions.
Even on Wall Street, where men dominate most firms, the lack of women at the top of Goldman Sachs has been a sore point internally. No woman has ever been named chairman, CEO, president or chief financial officer in the company’s history.
Last month, Goldman Sachs created two new committees within its investment bank, highlighting the challenge. The company has named 25 executives as emerging leaders who will have a say in running its vast trading and banking businesses.
Only three women made the cut, including Hammack, a former finance executive who most recently served as co-head of the firm’s global financing group.
Goldman Sachs has pledged to put more women in top jobs, and for years Hammack has been among a small group of people who have made the list in every behind-the-scenes conversation. Insiders saw her filling a role that would make her one of the bank’s most recognizable faces on Wall Street.
Representatives for New York-based Goldman Sachs and Hammack declined to comment.
more experience
In 2021, she was appointed chief financial officer and later assumed the role of head of finance. At the time, bank executives explained the move was to help her gain more experience managing revenue-generating units to prepare her for future growth. More senior positions later.
Hammack grew up outside of Philadelphia and had two summer internships at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Her father, Howard Morgan, is a venture capitalist who helped billionaire Jim Simmons found Renaissance Technologies. She joined Goldman Sachs in 1993 and began working her way up within its trading desk.
She has held a variety of roles handling agency bond, rates and repo transactions. After becoming a partner in 2010, her rise was fueled by her ability to deal with regulators and government agencies. Hammack also continues to serve as chairman of the Treasury Department’s Borrowing Advisory Committee, an influential Wall Street group that has the attention of the U.S. Treasury secretary.
Her promotion to treasurer in 2018 was a point of contention within the bank. Top managers are divided over whether the trading desk can spare one of its rare female top executives, underscoring the difficulties it faces in its efforts to diversify Goldman Sachs’ top ranks.
In 2021, following the departure of then-chief financial officer Stephen Scherr, Hammack was moved to the banking group, and company leadership named Denis Coleman as its next finance chief.
In 2012, Isabelle Ealet was appointed to lead the company’s trading division, becoming the company’s first woman to head a major division. Today, Stephanie Cohen is the only female head of one of the bank’s three divisions. She was in charge of Platform Solutions, which is being unraveled as Goldman Sachs withdraws from consumer banking.
