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FORTUNE.COM // DECEMBER 2019
once Goldman’s bread and butter, has turned
to crumbs now that it is largely automated—
representing 37% of the firm’s net revenues in
2018, down from 72% in ’09. (That drop has
come even though Goldman now commands
a bigger share of trading in those industries.)
And because Goldman’s old ways worked so
well for so long, it never went through the
postrecession reckoning its rivals did. “Gold-
man Sachs was a victim of its own success,”
Mayo says. “They didn’t feel the same need to
evolve as their underperforming peers.”
Now Goldman is the one underperforming.
Though it’s still No. 1 in mergers and acquisi-
tions and IPO dealmaking, its revenue has de-
clined 6% since 2010, to $36.6 billion in 2018,
and is on track to decline further this year. Its
stock has lagged both the financial sector and
the S&P 500 over the past five years—yielding
the worst returns of any major U.S. bank. It is
also facing its biggest reputational crisis since
the backlash against its too-big-to-fail bailout
famously led to its caricature as a “vampire
squid.” Two former Goldman Sachs executives
have been indicted for conspiring in a multibil-
lion-dollar theft from the Malaysian investment
fund known as 1MDB, a scandal that could cost
Goldman as much as $5 billion to settle.
Enter David Solomon. At six-feet-two, he stands—literally, in the
same office where Blankfein used to sit—a full head taller than his
predecessor. A broad-shouldered and imposing figure, Solomon
has an aggressive, at times combative style that forgoes Blankfein’s
characteristic humor in favor of blunt straight talk and a willing-
ness to rethink Goldman conventions Blankfein wouldn’t touch.
He’ll need those qualities for the tasks ahead. Solomon is acutely
aware he needs to jump-start Goldman’s revenue growth by forging
into new businesses the firm had previously overlooked (from large-
scale quant trading and managing corporate payments to being
banker to less wealthy consumers and doing deals with smaller
companies). He also needs to squeeze more efficiency from the
firm—and that may mean people will have to work harder to earn
the paychecks that have made Goldman’s upper echelons enor-
mously wealthy while luring bright young financial sharks to the
“I think we can do some work
to be more admired and
respected, and a little less
envied and feared.”
David Solomon • CEO and chairman, Goldman Sachs
SPINNING FORWARD
Solomon overcame his
initial fears that his DJ
gigs would lead people to
take him less seriously.
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