Find a person with a knack for numbers.  Put that person in a room with a couple of years worth of press releases and news articles.  And viola - a statistical analysis comparing the year-to-year differential in managing director promotions at Goldman Sachs. All seriousness aside, we appreciate and applaud Dow Jones' Julie Steinberg for bringing these findings to our attention.  After all, we at Compliance Insights believe in meritocracy, particularly when it comes to Wall Street promotions. Pardon the babble. Ms. Steinberg has concluded that fewer women made the cut to managing director at Goldman Sachs in 2011 than in 2010.  Women made up 19% of the 2011 new MD class, whereas, in 2010, women made up 24% of the 2010 new MD class. Missed Target. In numbers, that works out to 50 of 261 MDs named last week are women.  Last year, 77 of the 321 new MDs were women.  The numbers declined, and the firm declined to comment to Ms. Steinberg.

N.B.  Ms. Steinberg informs us that 'Managing Director' is Goldman's 2nd-highest rank, just below 'Partner'.  Partners are named every 2 years.  The MD class of 2011 will step into their new roles beginning 1/1/12.

Hit Target: Industry-Wide Basis. In all fairness to Goldman, participation by women among the senior ranks at Goldman is generally comparable to its industry rivals.  Take, for example, Morgan Stanley, where 38 of the 232 new MDs in 2010, or 16%, were women.  In 2009, 13% of the 212 new MDs were women. Catalyst, a nonprofit organization that seeks to advance women in business, notes that, in 2008, women made up 18.8% of executive/senior-level officials and managers at companies classified under the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's category of "Securities, Commodity Contracts & Other Financial Investments." For companies classified under "Investment Banking & Securities Dealing," a subcategory of the above category, women made up only 16.4% of executive/senior-level officials and managers. [WSJournal's FINS.com, 11/22/11]