Goldman wealth exec exits abruptly

A year after taking over Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s exclusive family office for the firm’s top brass, including current and former wealthy executives, partner Lisa Opoku joins a roster of executives abruptly giving up new posts.

Opoku, 51, is leaving Goldman after about two decades at the Wall Street giant, according to people with knowledge of her decision. The Harvard-trained lawyer helped run operations in financial hubs around the world before taking a newly created role running the Goldman Sachs Partner Family Office early last year. 

That unit offers a suite of wealth-management services to partners and managing directors — those still at the firm, as well as alumni. She had previously been chief operating officer for the bank’s global engineering team.

Now Opoku is among a growing number of Goldman executives to score promotions or get prominent new assignments over the past year only to depart quickly amid repeated reorganizations of business lines. One of the most high-profile departures emerged just last week, as Julian Salisbury, chief investment officer of Goldman’s asset- and wealth-management division since late last year, took a similar post at Sixth Street Partners.

Troy Broderick, named chief operating officer of Goldman’s mergers and acquisitions business in May, quit within a few weeks, and Russ Hutchinson, who got that same role last November, departed five months later.

Opoku is at least the fifth partner to depart the bank in the past week alone. She didn’t respond to a request for comment.

At most Wall Street firms, a wave of executive departures is typically seen in the weeks immediately after the bonus payouts that take place early in the year. 

A former practicing attorney, Opoku arrived at New York-based Goldman on a short-term legal assignment and ended up joining the firm. She held leadership positions in revenue-generating divisions in Hong Kong, London and New York, and served more than a half decade as COO of the bank’s engineering division.

Opoku had been committed to advancing the firm’s diversity and inclusion priorities, including as a sponsor of the Firmwide Black Network and in her prior role as co-chair of the Americas Inclusion and Diversity Committee, Goldman said in a note to staff.