Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has appointed Suzanne Nora Johnson and Andrew Melnick as co-directors of the firm’s Global Investment Research Division.

Melnick and Nora Johnson will join the firm’s management committee. They will also oversee Goldman Sachs’ global equity investment, foreign exchange and economic research efforts, and the firm’s portfolio strategy groups.

Melnick, who will become a managing director of the firm, comes to Goldman Sachs from Merrill Lynch & Co. where he was director of the Global Securities, Economic and Fundamental Equity Research for 13 years. Melnick has also served as president of Woolcott & Co., an independent brokerage firm, director of research at L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin, and as an industry analyst at Drexel Burnham Lambert.

Nora Johnson will leave Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division where she has led the firm’s global healthcare business since 1994. She is a director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, RAND Health, the University of Southern California and TechnoServe, and serves on an advisory council for the Harvard Medical School. Before joining Goldman Sachs, Ms. Johnson practiced law at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett and clerked with the U.S. Court of Appeals.

“We are pleased to announce this strong new leadership team and to reaffirm the importance of distinguished and truly independent investment research to Goldman Sachs,” said Henry Paulson Jr., chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. “We also want to affirm our support for the efforts now under way by Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission and our self-regulatory groups to frame standards around investment research that will ensure the continued confidence of investors worldwide and with it, the leadership position of the U.S. securities markets.”