At Goldman, much of the promote is expected to benefit the bank, but portions have been set aside for executives directly involved in the ventures, people familiar with the matter said.

Solomon has pushed to expand the allocation of founder shares to a small group in the bank’s upper management. That’s irritated members of the SPAC team — essentially pitting them against the CEO for a share of the spoils.

One common criticism of SPACs is that public shareholders bear most of the risk while sponsors reap the promote. To ward off that perception, Goldman has allowed founder shares to start vesting only if the SPAC gains at least 20%.

While the bank has long allowed bosses to buy into its funds, investing in a SPAC’s promote would stand out, given the chances for outsized returns within just a few years from a public vehicle. Even structuring it as a fair-market-value investment still promises bigger gains than other opportunities available to the executives, the people said.

Internal teams have been scrambling to figure out how to structure and disclose the SPAC investment for the NEOs while avoiding the appearance of boosting pay. The proposal may yet fail to go through, two of the people said.

This isn’t the only time under Solomon that Goldman’s leaders have explored ways to increase their share of profits from internal investment vehicles. At one point they examined whether private funds operated by the firm’s merchant bank could carve off a larger slice of fund-performance rewards for senior managers than what other partners could collect.

As memories of 2008’s taxpayer-funded bailouts give way to rising public awareness of income inequality, many bank boards remain wary of paying executives too lavishly.

That often leaves directors playing a guessing game, seeking to raise CEO pay in line with what rivals do — while taking care not to overshoot and draw attention.

When Goldman was finalizing Solomon’s package in early 2020, it wanted to reward him for the stock’s best annual performance since 2013. But Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, whose shares were also on a tear, pulled out a surprise by trimming his own pay about 7% to $27 million. Goldman, caught off guard, delayed disclosing its compensation decision that January.

Gorman was aware of that dynamic and privately needled Goldman executives about it.