Fortune - USA (2019-12)

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FORTUNE.COM // DECEMBER 2019

presidents—Solomon was seen as the under-

dog. He was an investment banker; both his

rival and boss Blankfein were traders. Among

peers, he also bore the brand of a “lateral”—he

had been hired from Bear Stearns as a partner

in 1999, instead of working his way up to the

title from within.

Above all Solomon, who’d once worked at

McDonald’s and been rejected the first two

times he applied to Goldman, was a jarring

force in the firm’s tirelessly collegial atmo-

sphere. Coming from elsewhere on the Street,

another transplant notes, Goldman could

“feel like you walked into Pleasantville.” In

the firm’s consensus-driven culture, Solomon

was a strong-willed, table-pounding decision-

maker. He would tell employees to their face

when they had no shot of making partner that

year, and openly challenge colleagues’ ideas in

meetings of 25 other people. “The first couple

conversations were a little brutal, but people

then appreciate it—there’s no BS,” says Gregg

Lemkau, who has Solomon’s former job as

cohead of investment banking. If you need

someone to tell you you did a good job, Lem-

kau advised a colleague, “Go hire somebody to

do that for you.”

Still, Solomon had enough emotional

intelligence to navigate the firm’s politics and

temper his tone accordingly, and he impressed

his superiors with his ability to nurture and

groom underlings. “He’d probably be pissed

at me for saying this,” says Chris Nassetta,

Hilton’s CEO and Solomon’s close friend, “but

I think a lot of people don’t know that David

is a sweetheart of a guy.”

Solomon doesn’t emphasize that side as he

but until now the firm, believing the market too unpredictable, had
only ever budgeted through each calendar year. “The way we made
investments is we’d rub sticks together, we’d sprinkle a little bit on
something,” says Solomon. In other words, each year Goldman’s
people had to find a way to bring in more money than the last, but
anything that required a longer-term commitment of resources to
pay off later was off the table. “You don’t just get to run faster, jump
higher, and have more profit just because we’re Goldman Sachs,”
says COO John Waldron, reinforcing the focus on investing. “You’ve
got to put money in the ground that grows over time.”
It all adds up to a pivotal moment for Goldman Sachs, and
Solomon will help determine whether the firm leads again or fades
out of relevance. As someone who was seldom in the press before
the DJ D-Sol revelations, he’s still adjusting to the spotlight that
comes with his powerful role; in interviews this fall, Solomon
described a personal struggle to “live my life in a normal way.” His
collaborators say that kind of practical, unpretentious mentality
may be just what the bank needs now. “I think he’s doing the right
things to evolve Goldman Sachs to compete in the 21st century,”
says Michael Dell, whose company Dell Technologies has been a
Goldman client longer than Solomon has worked there (and whose
brother’s startup, Clarity Money, was acquired by Goldman last
year). “Supertankers don’t just turn.”

S

OLOMON BECAME CEO, in October 2018, at a tumultuous
time not only for the firm but in his own life. He’d re-
cently finalized his divorce. His second week in the job,
his former assistant, who’d been charged with stealing
$1.2 million worth of wine from Solomon’s collection,
jumped to his death from a Manhattan hotel window. Solomon’s two
twentysomething daughters, with whom he’d long had a standing
Sunday night dinner date in New York, had both moved across the
country that summer. His father had passed away in his seventies
a couple of years earlier. “I think he wishes his parents had been
alive to see him become CEO of Goldman Sachs,” says a friend who’s
known Solomon since his undergraduate years at Hamilton College.
“I think that would have been incredibly meaningful to him.”
The 57-year-old Solomon found himself at the zenith of his ca-
reer, single and no longer tethered to many of his former responsi-
bilities—outside the small task of running Goldman Sachs. “If I’m
not working, I can basically do whatever I want,” he says. “And as
a personality, if I decide I’m interested in something and I’m going
to do it, I’m going to do it. I mean, I’m going to try to really do it
to the highest capacity of my ability, or I’m not going to do it.” He’s
applied that intensity to hobbies like DJing and kite-surfing—some
colleagues have termed him a “born-again millennial.”
He’s also applied it at the bank, where Solomon has always been
something of an outlier. Competing with Harvey Schwartz for the
top job—beginning in late 2016, when they were both named co-

“Goldman Sachs

was a victim of its

own success. They

didn’t feel the same

need to evolve

as their under­

performing peers.”

Mike Mayo • Analyst, Wells Fargo

GOLDMAN SACHS