Greg smith goldman sachs biography book
Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story
December 19, 2017
While this is a story of a young man’s career in finance, it is also documentation of change in organizational culture in a premier American institution. It may be a representation of what happened on Wall Street in a brief 12 years.
Greg Smith had served as a GS intern and was thrilled to be among those selected for employment. He described the extensive training program, the long days, the Open Meetings, his peer group, the dress code and licensing tests (& how he took his on Sept 11, 2001). Smith recognized how his mentors conveyed GS’s Number 1 Principle: the client come first. He was proud of Goldman, its mission, its research capabilities and the long term relationships it nurtured.
Through the description of his experience you learn how things work at Goldman, about trading, the hierarchy, the international reach, the career paths, and the personalities of traders, VPs, partners, and “quants”. He clearly describes complex financial instruments, how the hand signals work in the Chicago futures markets, how clients are courted and ranked and how mentors are found. He describes his life which may be typical of the life of a young and rising financial professional. He hunts apartments, dates and almost marries, connects and reconnects with friends from college; he has family ties in the US and abroad.
2008 was a bad year for financial markets. Risk takers had essentially destroyed their own firms (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch) and clients wanted to know if Goldman was next. Trading wasn’t as lucrative and the pressure was enormous. As layoffs began, GS managers and traders sought work In more stable sectors of the company, leaving others behind and some out of a job. Those who produced $ became more prominent than those who put the client first.
Smith shows how the firm began selling junk and trading against long term clients. Everyone was looking for the “elephant trade” (yielding $1 million for GS) and sometimes that requires selling out a GS client: a pension fund, sovereign wealth fund, a bank or a wealthy individual, which has wide-spread effects (bank clients, retirees and future retirees, Greece, US mortgage holders, etc.). Smith shows how this affected the people who remained at GS whom he had known over the years. Some embraced the golden goose, others who preferred the former culture went along. Not too many stepped outside like Greg Smith.
He takes you through GS's Henry Paulson as Treasury Secretary, the hearings, the bailouts. the minimal fine and the the GS internal review.
If you have an important story to tell, and wonder how to get it into the New York Times, Smith shows you how to do it. This is a epic in and of itself.
The book is substantive and readable. Because this it defines an era like no other piece of writing I know of, it may become a classic.
Greg Smith had served as a GS intern and was thrilled to be among those selected for employment. He described the extensive training program, the long days, the Open Meetings, his peer group, the dress code and licensing tests (& how he took his on Sept 11, 2001). Smith recognized how his mentors conveyed GS’s Number 1 Principle: the client come first. He was proud of Goldman, its mission, its research capabilities and the long term relationships it nurtured.
Through the description of his experience you learn how things work at Goldman, about trading, the hierarchy, the international reach, the career paths, and the personalities of traders, VPs, partners, and “quants”. He clearly describes complex financial instruments, how the hand signals work in the Chicago futures markets, how clients are courted and ranked and how mentors are found. He describes his life which may be typical of the life of a young and rising financial professional. He hunts apartments, dates and almost marries, connects and reconnects with friends from college; he has family ties in the US and abroad.
2008 was a bad year for financial markets. Risk takers had essentially destroyed their own firms (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch) and clients wanted to know if Goldman was next. Trading wasn’t as lucrative and the pressure was enormous. As layoffs began, GS managers and traders sought work In more stable sectors of the company, leaving others behind and some out of a job. Those who produced $ became more prominent than those who put the client first.
Smith shows how the firm began selling junk and trading against long term clients. Everyone was looking for the “elephant trade” (yielding $1 million for GS) and sometimes that requires selling out a GS client: a pension fund, sovereign wealth fund, a bank or a wealthy individual, which has wide-spread effects (bank clients, retirees and future retirees, Greece, US mortgage holders, etc.). Smith shows how this affected the people who remained at GS whom he had known over the years. Some embraced the golden goose, others who preferred the former culture went along. Not too many stepped outside like Greg Smith.
He takes you through GS's Henry Paulson as Treasury Secretary, the hearings, the bailouts. the minimal fine and the the GS internal review.
If you have an important story to tell, and wonder how to get it into the New York Times, Smith shows you how to do it. This is a epic in and of itself.
The book is substantive and readable. Because this it defines an era like no other piece of writing I know of, it may become a classic.