Goldman Sachs announced its Partner Class of 2026 last Thursday. The 109 bankers and traders will join the partnership on January 1, 2027, up from 95 two years ago.

None of them is based in Switzerland. According to Goldman Sachs, however, five Swiss nationals are on the list, all in the Global Banking & Markets division: Sabine Wick, Gaudenz Eichenberger and Guillaume Banderet in London, and Frederic Pripp and Christian Beerli in Hong Kong.

Two from the Swiss derivatives desk

Beerli started as an analyst in derivatives sales in Zurich in 2006. He later ran the Swiss sales team of the Private Investor Products Group from London.

In 2017, he was named managing director and moved to Hong Kong (as finews.ch reported, in German). His current responsibilities include cross-product derivatives sales for Asia-Pacific. A University of Zurich graduate, Beerli is a CFA charterholder.

Eichenberger joined the same team from Deutsche Bank in Zurich in 2013 (as finews.ch reported, in German). In 2017, finews.ch ranked him among the 30 most influential figures in the Swiss structured products market (in German).

After heading Swiss derivatives sales, he became managing director in 2019. The University of St. Gallen graduate now leads the structured solutions team for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

From leveraged finance to inflation

Wick is co-head of leveraged finance for the EMEA region. She joined in 2014 as a vice president from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where she had spent nine years in New York, London and Frankfurt.

She was promoted to managing director in 2017. Like Beerli, she studied at the University of Zurich.

Banderet heads inflation trading in London. Previously an inflation and government bond trader at UBS and Deutsche Bank, he joined Goldman in 2017 and has been a managing director since 2023. Like Eichenberger, he is a University of St. Gallen graduate.

Five in a single class

Pripp, finally, is homegrown. An electrical engineering graduate of Imperial College London, he joined as an analyst in equity derivatives trading in 2012 and became managing director in 2019.

He previously ran equity trading at Goldman Sachs Bank Europe. Today, he oversees equity derivatives flow trading for Asia-Pacific from Hong Kong.

Five Swiss in one class is remarkable. In 2018, three made the cut: Beat Cabiallavetta, his wife Niharika Cabiallavetta, and Radovan Radman (as finews.ch reported, in German). Beat Cabiallavetta is the son of former UBS chairman Mathis Cabiallavetta.

A title from the pre-IPO era

The bank's most senior Swiss is François-Xavier de Mallmann. Named partner in 2004, he now serves as chairman of Goldman Sachs EMEA and of investment banking.

Goldman has been publicly listed since 1999 but has held on to the partnership, naming new partners only every two years. CEO David Solomon and COO John Waldron call the decisions "extremely difficult" and expressly acknowledge the hard work of those who were not selected this time.

This article has been updated. An earlier version named only Gaudenz Eichenberger and Christian Beerli as new Swiss partners at Goldman Sachs.