Stephen Friedman to Retire From Goldman Board

Manny Ceneta/Agence France-PresseStephen Friedman, left, after President Bush announced his appointment as a top White House economic adviser in December 2002.

Stephen Friedman, a director of Goldman Sachs and chairman of the board’s risk committee, plans to retire, the firm announced on Thursday.

A onetime leader of Goldman who worked at the firm for nearly 30 years, Mr. Friedman is stepping down on May 22, the day before Goldman’s annual shareholder meeting. He will be replaced by Adebayo O. Ogunlesi, a well-known figure on Wall Street who joined the board last fall.

Mr. Friedman, 75, is required to retire by Goldman’s corporate governance guidelines, which set 75 as the maximum age for directors. The board accepted his retirement on April 2.

He joined Goldman’s board in April 2005. Since 2005, he has also been chairman of Stone Point Capital, a private equity firm. Mr. Friedman also worked in the White House under President George W. Bush, serving as assistant to the president for economic policy and as director of the National Economic Council.

As senior partner and chairman of Goldman, Mr. Friedman ran the firm with Robert E. Rubin until his colleague became Treasury secretary in 1992. Mr. Friedman left two  years later. A lawyer by training, he  joined Goldman in 1966.

Mr. Friedman was well compensated as a director of Goldman, earning $503,287 in 2011, according to Equilar , a compensation data firm.

His successor, Mr. Ogunlesi, is an independent director who once ran the investment bank at Credit Suisse and, since 2006, has run the private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners. He once said he was not a typical investment banker, telling The New York Times in 2002, “I don’t wear suspenders, and when I had hair I didn’t slick it back.”

Currently a member of the risk committee of Goldman’s board, Mr. Ogunlesi is set to become the new chair of the risk committee upon Mr. Friedman’s retirement.

Mr. Friedman generated some controversy as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the financial crisis, when the Fed was helping put together a rescue plan for Wall Street. He stepped down from that role in 2009, after questions arose about his ties to Goldman.

As leader of Goldman, Mr. Friedman was an avid jogger, wearing a Timex Ironman digital watch and logging three or more miles a day. In addition to running, his hobbies included chess.

Upon stepping down from the helm of Goldman in 1994, Mr. Friedman dismissed rumors that he was in poor health.

“Only on Wall Street,” he told The New York Times at the time, “do people think it bizarre that I don’t want to spend half of my day on the telephone and the other half on an airplane.”