The decision to become a public company did not come easily for Goldman Sachs. On the seventh attempt in 27 years, the partners agreed at the weekend to abandon the nearly 130-year-old partnership which has become one of the most prestigious firms on Wall Street.

Sunday's meeting of the executive board, when the decision was made and a plan drawn up, was the culmination of months of discussions and disagreement within the firm.

Mr Jon Corzine, co-chairman and co-chief executive officer, who backed the plan, had always insisted on the need to build consensus, but the strategy could have backfired, particularly given the feelings of Mr John Thain and Mr John Thornton, members of the executive committee, who were against a flotation.

When Morgan Stanley went public in 1986, the process was very different. The firm's two top executives took their decision to float to the board and then forced it on the partners. Those who did not like it, lumped it or left, with little ceremony.

At Goldman, the long process of building support for the idea, and the management's willingness to give dissenters an unbiased hearing, seems to have won over some of the cynics.

Jon Corzine is convinced of the importance of consensus, which he believes will ultimately lead to unanimous support for the IPO, when the time comes - there will be a vote in mid-July. "If people feel unable to express themselves, then we have failed in being a culture which has diversity and intellectual integrity," he says.

He argues that the float will not cause a split because "people willingly came to this decision". He notes that partners at the weekend meeting had expressed "a very clear and strong preference for independence" and for the financial benefits to be distributed among all employees of the firm.

While many at Goldman have felt reluctant to abandon the partnership, some said that there was a feeling the time was right and that the plan to give $6-$8 billion of the value of the firm to employees below partnership level should help bind some of the associates and vice-presidents who help earn much of the profits to the firm.

But the question people at Goldman are now pondering is that of how the firm will change. The business is clearly set to grow more rapidly, and may make more acquisitions than in the past.

"Over the past five years, there were two to three properties that I think this firm could have gotten very excited about," says Mr Corzine, but its approaches were hampered by the demands of the partnership structure which he describes as "cumbersome".

He admits it "put us at a handicap", for example, in the recent bidding for Banco Garantia, the Brazilian investment bank. Indeed, the stated strategy of the management to build the business largely through organic growth but taking advantage of the firm's new capital structure to make acquisitions with stock when appropriate suggests that the transformation of Goldman will not be dramatic.