The venue was the Gotham Club -- an exclusive den inside the San Francisco Giants’ home stadium. It’s the ultimate man-cave.
It was here on an evening last December when roughly 100 women from the investment banking world gathered at an event billed as a leadership dinner. The caucus started as a small gathering a decade ago organized by Stephanie Cohen -- then an up-and-coming banker at Goldman Sachs, who was vexed by the chummy boys network that’s long dominated the business of guiding mergers and acquisitions.
Since then, the 41-year-old has charted a rapid rise inside Goldman Sachs, landing a seat last week on its most coveted decision-making body. Her elevation was the most noticeable in the group of four tapped to join the management committee, and not just because it’s comprised mostly of men.
Cohen is now the committee’s youngest, with the rare label of “ex officio” member. The bureaucratic asterisk is likely meant to avoid upsetting senior executives who’ve spent much longer trying to get on the panel, without luck. She’s about 10 years younger than the average man already on the committee, after becoming a partner just four years ago.
Since the start of this year, Cohen has held the weighty title of chief strategy officer -- leading a team that helps decide where the bank should pursue new lines of business or acquisitions of its own. When Goldman’s board gathered on the West Coast in late June, she gave a presentation on that group’s work.
This account of her ascent is based on interviews with people who’ve worked with Cohen, who asked not to be named discussing their interactions.
In mid-July, the company announced it will promote David Solomon to succeed Lloyd Blankfein as chief executive officer. Cohen’s elevation to the committee followed just days later -- strong evidence she has the incoming CEO’s confidence. She’ll be among seven women on the 33-person panel. Some inside the bank wonder whether she’s destined to rise even higher.
“A lot of investment bankers have the attention span of a gnat,” said Stephen DeFalco, who was the CEO of Crane & Co. before Goldman Sachs helped sell the company. “But she really got it. She dug into the bones of the deal and was very compelling.”
The sale of that company, which has been making parts of the U.S. currency bill going back to the 19th century, was among the last deals she worked on before moving to the executive suite.
Rejecting Deals
Cohen is a Goldman Sachs lifer who started at the bank as an analyst back in 1999, spending time in New York and San Francisco. Unlike traders, who can shoot to prominence within Wall Street firms at a very young age, Cohen’s career tracked that of the typical banker, climbing to be managing director in the class of 2008.