The 262 new managing directors at Goldman Sachs have a one in three chance of joining its elite band of partners – if they stay at the bank for the next decade.

Their chances of joining the top tier of management in the next round of partnership promotions in 2008 are just 5%, based on the fact only 20 of the 399 managing directors appointed in the bank's annual promotion rounds since 2004 were named as partners last week. But one in eight managing directors appointed at Goldman Sachs in the past four years have since been made partners. More than a fifth made managing director since 1998 have gone on to become partners at the Wall Street firm. The latest round of 115 partners took an average of just over four years from becoming managing directors to make the grade, five will join the partnership just a year after. They include Katinka Domotorffy, a portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management; Carl Faker, who joined the hedge fund sales team in London from Morgan Stanley in 2004; Ankur Sahu, a member of the principal investments group; Guy Saidenberg and Andrew Wolff. The managing director "class of 2003" is the best represented of the new partners, with 27 being promoted. Three quarters of the group have been made managing director within the past five years. Theodore Sotir, co-head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management in Europe, has the unusual distinction of having waited the longest to become a partner, having been promoted to managing director 10 years ago. The record number of new partners comes after Goldman set the pace on Wall Street in the first nine months of this year, with net profits of $6.3bn (€5bn) – an increase of 58% on the previous year.