Mike, you said the, the, the turnover
that we've seen the partner ranks hasn't been that unusual
. And yet we're hearing about Lloyd Blankfein being brought
back to the firm and really going after David Solomon
, having some pretty strong words for him. What
do you make of that? I mean, do
you think that just basically there are a lot of
bitter people talking to members of the media? You
know what I really think is happening here, I
think, and I don't have the numbers to back
this up. So I'm just going to get ballpark
numbers. But I think it's like, you know
, traders who are earning$6 million a year,
who got paid down last year to$4 million a
year or something like that. Just zip code wise
. I mean, they had a blowout year in
2021 last year was a bad year for Goldman.
People were paid down when they had great years.
They partly subsidizing this failed pore in consumer banking and
they're upset and they're taking their, and they probably
go to the CEO and the CEO. It's like
, look, when is the Goldman Sachs CEO been
a warm and fuzzy person. David Solomon. I
mean, you have to have strong opinions to change
your culture like he's doing while trying to generate profitability
. I think a lot of people are, are
upset about what they're getting paid. They're going to
the press with it, Mike, you're expert on
board analysis. We have a new board member,
Mr Montag, obviously uh Goldman Sachs Timber over at
Bank of America. He returns. You've got someone
like David Vini who ran the ship in 2007 under
crisis. Color the board makeup and decision right now
. How do you look at the Goldman Sachs Board
? Tom? You know, I've been a critic
of bank boards and it probably represents corporate boards more
generally. I feel like they're soft. They don't
really hold managements accountable, they don't listen to shareholder
concerns. So when I look at Goldman Sachs Board
, more than anything else like any bank board,
I think their push for change is probably not that
much that that's the reality of corporate America. And
you know, I wrote my book about it and
I still see it and there's some other banks today
. I'm happy to talk about where I think there's
much more need for change than Goldman Sachs. So
wait, wait in line. And I do want
to address your Lloyd Blankfein comment. You know,
he Lloyd Blankfein started to push a consumer seven years
ago and he amplified and it took up all the
discussion in the room almost in the meetings. And
now David Simon doubled down on consumer, but it
was Lloyd originally. And Lloyd probably doesn't like to
be tainted with some of these$3 billion in losses
. They're getting out of the market business aside from
the deposits. So his hands aren't completely clean in
this whole situation either. Mike, we've got about
60 seconds left. If we could finish by asking
you a pointed question, that would be good.
How would this stock respond if that headline dropped across
the Bloomberg, that he was out? I don't
think the stock would go up the fact the so
might even go down. So that's remember I called
for the to have the Citigroup CEO fired back around
after the global financial crisis and I think the stock
went up that day and that was a good moment
and we've seen that other places where the CEO goes
. But if David Salman were to be fired today
, I think the stock would actually go down because
it would be like, wow, you're running the
company based on media reports as opposed to financial results
. And by the way, what I talk to
investors, investors aren't saying, get rid of David
. So they're really asking the questions you're asking,
hey, does the media impact their performance? I'd
say no so far having said that David Solomon has
to earn his job every day and so I can
come back in three months or six months and he
doesn't get the job done. I'll be on the
other side.