The Vampire Squid's heart seems to have cost it some business.
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, this February endorsed same-sex marriage in a video for the Human Rights Campaign.
As it turns out, not everyone was happy about that.
"There was some adverse reaction by someone," Blankfein told activists on Wednesday, according to the Financial Times, adding that a business partner that Blankfein kept anonymous "didn't want to continue a relationship that they had with us" after the CEO publicized Goldman's stance on gay marriage. Blankfein was speaking to members of Out on the Street, an advocacy group that focuses on the LGBT community on Wall Street.
That Goldman would willingly lose business over something ideological stands in marked contrast to the picture painted by Greg Smith, a former Goldman executive that wrote a scathing column ripping the investment bank for its "toxic" tactics that put profits before all else. He subsequently resigned from the firm.
Blankfein's appearance in the Human Rights Campaign video raised a few eyebrows when the clip originally debuted. Some on the left, including a few within the LGBT community, were incensed that the HRC was using Blankfein as a spokesperson for gay rights, arguing that Wall Street firms generally do a terrible job of representing the interests of everyday people and marginalized groups.
At the same time, Wall Street is reportedly becoming a much more tolerant place as of late. Several of the country's biggest banks have been named among the best places for LGBT employees to work, and according to The New York Times, a handful of wealthy Wall Street financiers even played a key role in getting same-sex marriage legalized in the state of New York.
At the event on Wednesday, Blankfein called Wall Street "among the most egalitarian places," according to the FT, adding, "The market doesn't care whether you're black or white, tall or short, gay or straight."
Blankfein didn't tack on "male or female" to that list. Goldman Sachs faced its own high-profile sexual discrimination lawsuit a couple of years ago, as well as the recent finding that the male-female wage gap is more pronounced on Wall Street than in any other area of the economy.