Goldman Names Ogunlesi to Board

By PETER LATTMAN

Adebayo O. Ogunlesi in 2002.

 

Goldman Sachs announced an addition to its board late Monday, appointing Adebayo O. Ogunlesi as an independent director of the bank.
Mr. Ogunlesi is well-known on Wall Street, having run the investment bank at Credit Suisse in the last decade. Since 2006, he has run Global Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm that invests in infrastructure deals like energy projects and water companies. The firm, one of the world’s largest focused exclusively on infrastructure, announced this month that it had raised $8.25 billion for its most recent fund.
“Adebayo brings extensive experience in finance and the global capital markets to our board of directors,” Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman, said in a statement. “Our board and our shareholders will benefit from Adebayo’s wealth of knowledge and rigorous thinking.”
Goldman’s board has seen its fair share of movement in recent months. In April, Goldman lost one of its three female board members when Lois D. Juliber, a former senior executive at Colgate-Palmolive, did not stand for re-election, citing increased time commitments elsewhere. John H. Bryan, the former chief executive of Sara Lee, stepped down in May as a result of Goldman’s retirement policy, the firm said in a statement.
Last month, the bank announced that David Viniar, its longtime chief financial officer, would step down at the end of the year and, on his retirement, become a director.
Goldman’s board has also received some unwanted attention this year. The former Goldman director Rajat K. Gupta was convicted in May of leaking secret boardroom discussions to his friend Raj Rajaratnam, the former hedge fund manager serving an 11-year prison term for insider trading. Mr. Gupta’s sentencing is set for next week.
Mr. Ogunlesi, known as Bayo, is a native of Nigeria. He graduated from Oxford University and received law and business degrees from Harvard University. He served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court and practiced law for two years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore before pursuing a career on Wall Street.
In a New York Times profile in 2002, Mr. Ogunlesi, said that he never fit the mold of a typical investment banker. ”I don’t wear suspenders, and when I had hair, I didn’t slick it back,” he said.
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