(Bloomberg) — Wall Street veteran Marty Chavez is joining the board of Google parent Alphabet Inc., adding significant finance muscle to the technology giant.
Chavez, a vice chairman and partner with Sixth Street Partners, has worked as an investor and software executive but is best known for his 20-year tenure at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. John Hennessy, Alphabet’s chairman, welcomed Chavez in a statement as “an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur and investor.”
His appointment marks the first change to the Alphabet board since 2020, when former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt departed.
Chavez, 58, originally joined Goldman Sachs in the J. Aron trading unit. He then held various other roles at the firm, including chief financial officer, chief information officer, and head of its trading division, the bank’s largest unit.
After stepping away to found a technology startup, Chavez, an openly gay executive, returned to the firm and helped with Goldman Sachs’s efforts to remake itself as a tech company. After leaving the bank again, he joined Sixth Street Partners, a boutique investment firm run by former Goldman colleague Alan Waxman.
Chavez also chairs the board of biotech firm Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc. and was briefly on the board of Banco Santander SA.
To date, Google’s most prominent Wall Street appointment has been Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat, who came from Morgan Stanley. Shortly after Porat joined, in 2015, Google formed the holding company Alphabet, giving investors more insight into its expensive, futuristic ventures and the profitability of its advertising business.
Wall Street has long eyed the internet giant as a potential finance disruptor. But aside from a few investments and products, like Google Finance, the tech company has largely stayed out of the sector. It recently shelved a project to provide checking accounts with major banks.
In 2019, Alphabet added the biotechnology veterans Robin L. Washington and Frances Arnold to the board. Its directors also include CEO Sundar Pichai and founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who stepped away from major roles at the company in 2019.
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