Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said 84 employees -- including the largest percentage of women ever -- have been named partner, a title that remains among the most prestigious on Wall Street more than 17 years after the firm went public.

The promotions, which take place every two years, are up from the 78 appointed in 2014 and the most since 110 were selected in 2010, the investment bank said Wednesday in a statement. Goldman Sachs named 70 partners in 2012, the fewest in its history as a public company. Partners, known as participating managing directors, typically receive a $950,000 salary, a cut of a special bonus pool and the opportunity to invest in private funds.

Goldman Sachs spends months vetting candidates for selection as partners, a nod to the New York-based firm’s 130 years as a private partnership that ended with its 1999 initial public offering. After the selections are made, Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein and President Gary D. Cohn review the final list and then notify those chosen with a phone call.

Nineteen of the new partners -- or about 23 percent -- are women, the highest proportion and most ever, spokesman Michael DuVally said in an interview. After the 1998 class was chosen, when the firm was still a private partnership, 6 percent of the firm’s 246 partners were women.

Twenty-six of the new partners work in the trading division, 22 in investment banking, 10 in asset management, seven in merchant banking, two in research and two for the banking unit, DuVally said. Fifteen work in the administrative arm, known as “The Federation.”

About 61 percent are based in the Americas, with 25 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and 14 percent in Asia, DuVally said.

Among those promoted are: Kathryn Koch, global head of client portfolio management for Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s equities business; Omer Ismail, chief operating officer for Goldman Sach’s new consumer-lending arm; Jason Savarese, chief financial officer and co-COO for the securities division; and Kim Posnett, global co-head of internet investment banking.

By the time a new class is announced the number of partners typically dips to around 400, so the firm will have about 480 when the promotions take effect Jan. 1, according to a person with knowledge of the numbers, who asked not to be identified discussing personnel issues. That will amount to about 1.4 percent of full-time employees, compared with about 1.6 percent after the last round.

Partners collectively owned about 7.2 percent of the firm’s stock as of Jan. 26, according to a Feb. 9 regulatory filing. The stake has dropped from more than 11 percent at the beginning of 2014.

Goldman Sachs profit fell 5 percent in the first nine months of 2016 to $5.05 billion. The bank set aside 41 percent of revenue for employee pay, an increase over the 40 percent put away for the same period last year. Return on equity, a measure of how well a company reinvests profit to generate additional earnings, was 8.7 percent through the first nine months, down from as high as 33 percent before the crisis.

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