On October 16, 1986, Goldman Sachs named 37 new partners, the most ever in the firm’s history.

Among those named partner was Jeanette W. Loeb, the firm’s first woman partner. Jeanette joined Goldman Sachs on a full-time basis in 1977 after receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School. She had worked in Investment Research during the summer of 1976. Jeanette began in the firm’s Private Finance Department and spent her career there and in its successor, the Structured Finance Group. Among her key accomplishments, Jeanette served as the lead banker financing one of the first continuous casters for the US steel industry and developed the supplier financing product. This was followed by similar assignments for most of the other major steel producers in the United States and Canada.

Also in the 1986 partner class was Garland “Gar” E. Wood, the firm’s first black partner. Garland had joined the firm in 1972 after receiving his MBA from Columbia Business School. He began his career in the Municipal Bond Department, which had fewer than 10 professionals at the time. By his retirement in 1994, it had grown to more than one hundred. Garland was an innovator in public finance, instrumental in leading advance refunding efforts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also played a significant role in the firm’s early work financing single-family housing, which helped make Goldman Sachs a top firm in the tax-exempt business.

Another member of the 1986 partner class was economist and mathematician Fischer Black. Fischer’s innovative financial models would revolutionize option pricing, fixed income derivative valuation and global portfolio diversification. A leading voice in both academia and the business of finance, Fischer Black served as director of the Quantitative Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs, spearheading the firm’s efforts in quantitative risk management.

 

This article was originally published as part of a series commemorating the 150th anniversary of Goldman Sachs' founding in 1869.