By Saeed Azhar
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs added its President and Chief Operating Officer John Waldron to its board of directors a month after he was given a retention bonus, cementing his position as a potential successor to CEO David Solomon.
Waldron, 55, joins Solomon, 63, as the second member of the management committee to have a seat on the board.
"It does appear that firmer succession planning is underway," said Stephen Biggar, a banking analyst at Argus Research.
The bonuses, which vest in five years, were awarded to Solomon and Waldron in an effort by Goldman's board to retain top leaders, the bank said last month.
Waldron, who has been president and chief operating officer since October 2018, oversees the leaders of the bank's three main divisions. He previously served as co-head of investment banking, a role he assumed in 2014 after joining Goldman in 2000.
Gary Cohn, a former president of the firm, previously served as a director alongside Solomon's predecessor, Lloyd Blankfein.
Cohn left Goldman in late 2016 to join President Donald Trump's first administration as an economic adviser and lead the White House National Economic Council.
The bank also announced on Wednesday it added Accenture's former Chief Financial Officer KC McClure as an independent director of the board.
McClure will also become a member of each of the board's audit, governance and risk committees on April 1, the bank said.
Goldman Sachs earned its biggest quarterly profit in more than three years in the fourth quarter as its investment bankers brought in more deal fees, while its traders benefited from active markets, the company said in January.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri, Lananh Nguyen, Marguerita Choy and Chris Reese)