Goldman Sachs has ended its policy requiring IPO clients to have diverse boards, citing a legal ruling that ended a similar initiative at the Nasdaq.

Goldman Sachs is ending its policy that mandated companies have a diverse board for the bank to take them public. The rule, a version of which was implemented in 2020, had said the bank would only underwrite the initial public offerings for companies in the U.

Goldman's DEI policy had existed since 2020, when it announced that it would only take public a company in the United States or Western Europe if at least one of its board directors counted as diverse, usually understood as being from a demographic historically under-represented in corporate America.