Just over a week ago, on the evening of Dec. 7, Lloyd C. Blankfein hosted a reunion of one of the most elite clubs in American finance: former partners of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street giant he has led, with remarkable and controversial success, since 2006.
Much attention is being paid to how Lloyd C. Blankfein, right, is leading today’s Goldman Sachs.
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Gary D. Cohn, who also leads today’s Goldman Sachs.
The gathering, held at the venerable New York Athletic Club, both celebrated Goldman’s past and looked toward its future. What, Mr. Blankfein was asked, did he want his legacy to be?
Mr. Blankfein replied that like his predecessors, he hoped to position Goldman Sachs to capitalize on whatever opportunities might arise during his tenure. As bland as that might sound, few on or off Wall Street have seized opportunities in these troubled economic times as skillfully as Mr. Blankfein.
But as President Obama prods the financial industry to do more to help ordinary Americans — he chided “fat cat bankers” on Sunday for increasing their pay — some current and former Goldman executives say Mr. Blankfein has built a money machine that, while it still values its customers, culture and reputation, puts profits above all.
Interviews with nearly 20 current and former Goldman partners paint a portrait of a bank driven by hard-charging traders like Mr. Blankfein, who wager vast sums in world markets in hopes of quick profits. Discreet bankers who give advice to corporate clients and help them raise capital — once a major source of earnings for Goldman — have been eclipsed, these people said.
Mr. Blankfein has surrounded himself with a tight circle of executives drawn from Goldman’s trading operation. Many of these executives, like Mr. Blankfein, cut their teeth in the commodities division, J. Aron & Company. Gary D. Cohn, Goldman’s president, as well as the heads of the bank’s asset management division, are J. Aron alumni. So is the head of human resources.
With the traders ascendant, Goldman’s bankers are being urged to generate bigger profits. In what former partners called a significant shift, Goldman now uses “profiles” to track how much money its bankers are bringing in.
Granted, money is what makes Wall Street run, and Goldman Sachs is no exception.
“I don’t buy the argument that the old Goldman was more principled and less greedy,” said Arthur Levitt, a Goldman adviser and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But even Goldman concedes it is changing with the times. “This business is all about serving clients, and if you don’t evolve, you die,” said Lucas van Praag, a Goldman spokesman.
After first guiding Goldman through the near collapse of the nation’s financial system and then deftly extricating his bank from a federal bailout, Mr. Blankfein is now presiding over one of the richest periods in the bank’s 140-year history. Mr. Blankfein has accelerated a decade-long decline of Goldman’s old partnership ethos, which was built around the principle that its bankers and traders can do well — indeed, very well — while putting their customers first, former partners said.
Some Goldman alumni worry that Mr. Blankfein is jeopardizing the culture of success that defined the bank for much of its modern history. They wonder if Goldman will become, as one former partner put it, “just like every other bank on Wall Street” — that is, focused on short-term profits rather than long-term gains.
Publicly, Mr. Blankfein espouses the Goldman Sachs way. But privately, current and former partners say that he has fundamentally changed the way Goldman views its customers and the broader marketplace. The changes began when Goldman went public in the late 1990s, but have accelerated under Mr. Blankfein, they say.
None of these people were willing to speak out publicly about Goldman, which, for most of them, has been the source of sizable fortunes.
Bowing to pressure from shareholders and the public to rein in runaway pay on Wall Street, Goldman announced last week that its top executives, including Mr. Blankfein, would forgo cash bonuses this year. Instead, the executives will be paid in the form of special stock — an arrangement that, while eliminating big paydays this year, nonetheless may turn out to be enormously lucrative if Goldman’s share prices rises in the future.
Even so, many Goldman employees are stunned by the public resentment directed at the bank in general and Mr. Blankfein in particular, who, after first steadfastly defending Goldman’s profits and pay, recently offered a vague apology for “mistakes” that led to the financial crisis.
“Would John Weinberg ever be in this situation?” asked one former partner, referring to the legendary senior partner who ran Goldman for many years. “No way. He would have thought about the firm over 50, 100 years, not what people will get paid this year.”
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