The Diverse Asset Managers Initiative’s (DAMI) founder and executive director Robert Raben issued the following statement in response to the news that Goldman Sachs paid a $215 million gender discrimination settlement.

“In 2021, Morgan Stanley published study results that found that 56 percent of total asset owners – and 70 percent of white asset owners – believe that it is important to incorporate diversity into their investment decisions, but believe that doing so comes at the expense of returns.

“DAMI believes that this study’s findings are rooted in the discrimination faced by women and people of color at Goldman Sachs, and other financial institutions. This behavior is problematic and costly – not just because GS has agreed to a nine-figure settlement – but because they’re sacrificing returns for their clients for the sake of the inaccurate bias that led them to believe that women cannot manage assets as well as men.

“We urge institutions to take steps to counter the actual bias that exists within management, rather than pay out large sums to compensate for the results of that bias.”