"Wall Street King" losing its charm? Goldman Sachs faces wave of resignations

At the beginning of this month, Goldman Sachs launched its third round of layoffs within a year, with the number of layoffs possibly around 250 people, in preparation for a "more difficult environment", and this round of layoffs may affect some executives.

What is even more difficult to ignore is that even those who have not been laid off are voting with their feet to leave Goldman Sachs. Since September last year, senior executives such as Katie Koch, Chief Investment Officer of Public Equity, Craig Russell, Vice Chairman of Asset Management, and Maeve DuVally, Executive Director of PR, have all left one after another.

This investment bank, which has the loudest reputation in the world and has many top talents, seems to have shown some signs of instability in its empire.

Top Investment Banks Facing Resignation Wave

To be frank, personnel turnover in the financial industry has always been frequent, let alone Goldman Sachs, which has more than 45,000 employees. But the degree of talent outflow that Goldman Sachs has faced recently is enough to be called a wave of resignations. A former Goldman Sachs executive told Puck News:

"The whole situation at Goldman Sachs doesn't look as good as it used to."

The number of people who resigned this year is even worse than last year. In February, Peeyush Nahar, global head of consumer business, resigned; in March and April, three investment banking partners, including Rob Chisholm, resigned, and a group of traders in the Asia-Pacific region also resigned; in May, Troy Broderick, COO of the M&A department, chose to resign shortly after joining Goldman Sachs; and in early June, Dina Powell-McCormick, one of the highest-ranking executives at Goldman Sachs who had been serving for 16 years, also unexpectedly resigned.

Goldman Sachs is still struggling to recover from the bear market in 2022. John Waldron, the group's president, previously stated that the bank's trading business in this quarter has dropped by more than 25% year-on-year. Although there have been some signs of strength in the US stock market recently, he still believes that the current market performance is "weak".

Analysts predict that Goldman Sachs' revenue this year will be roughly the same as the revenue announced last year, about $48 billion. This is $10 billion less than the revenue the company achieved during the tech bull market in 2021.

Many Senior Partners Prefer to Go to Small Companies to Expand Their Horizons

The destinations of these top talents who left Goldman Sachs are mostly small and medium-sized companies that are far smaller than Goldman Sachs. For example, Troy Broderick, who resigned from the M&A department in May, chose to join Perella Weinberg, run by former Goldman Sachs partners Peter Weinberg and Bob Steel. Compared with Goldman Sachs, which has a market value of $111 billion, Perella Weinberg has a market value of only $720 million. According to a report by Puck News, John Rogers, Executive Vice President of Goldman Sachs, believes that it is normal for people to leave, especially talented ones. "Some of them may leave because there is no room for growth at Goldman Sachs."

Tony Fratto, head of the PR department, also told Puck News that "it is expected that outstanding executives will leave, and there is no 'new storyline' behind recent departures."

Fratto said:

"This is one of the special and great things about Goldman Sachs. We attract a lot of talented people... and have been doing so for decades. The departures from Goldman Sachs are noteworthy, and these people are all outstanding in the industry. They leave because they can do something interesting, and most of them have been working at Goldman Sachs for decades... In fact, this is a feature of our talent, recruitment, and career development, not a problem. Not everyone can stay here forever."

In addition to economic returns, top talents often value the sense of achievement that their work can bring.

When asked why Blackstone Group, co-founder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman continued to expand into new businesses such as hedge funds, private credit, and distressed securities while developing its core business of private equity investments, Schwarzman replied that his top talent team needed a reason to stay in the company:

"I want to keep my top talent, but I need to provide them with better opportunities. When you expand into new areas, new products, and new businesses, they can see opportunities to manage things. That's why I can keep people."