JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs resist calls to roll back diversity

financialpost.com:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are pushing back on demands to roll back their diversity initiatives.

In television appearances Wednesday, the chief executives of the two New York-based firms said they’re going to continue to focus on programs to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their workforces and customer bases even as shareholder activists push them to change course.

“Bring them on,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Dimon said that working to include marginalized groups in JPMorgan’s business is good for its bottom line and that he regularly receives praise for the bank’s DEI efforts from community leaders and local government officials across the country. “We’re going to continue to reach out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community,” he said.

In the lead-up to President Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, big companies including Walmart Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. unveiled plans to roll back their DEI programs. Walmart faced pressure from the anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck, but the company said its changes were designed to “foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers.”

While Starbuck hasn’t publicly criticized the big banks, groups including the National Legal and Policy Center and the National Center for Public Policy Research, which own shares in the firms, have filed shareholder proposals urging the banks to remove links between diversity initiatives and executive pay, and examine DEI initiatives for legal and reputational risks.

“Our proposal is really about incentivizing how executives are leading