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itself, running the kind of front-to-back review it has done for innumer-
able clients. He asked his lieutenants to strip their businesses “down to
the studs,” asking as many as 40 questions in the span of a 90-minute
meeting. “He doesn’t ask a question rhetorically,” notes CFO Stephen
Scherr. Solomon’s edict: “There are no sacred cows.” That included the
securities division, where Blankfein, a trader by background, had resist-
ed changes; so far, Solomon has green-lit more automated trading and
the consolidation of back-end operations, which is expected to shave off
some jobs. He also merged Goldman’s high-net-worth and consumer
businesses, with the aim of serving both sets of customers with a single
web platform. “There are very few leaders in the financial services busi-
ness who are very detail-oriented and at the same time strategic,” says
Alan Schwartz, once Solomon’s boss at Bear Stearns, now Guggenheim
Partners’ executive chairman. “David is one of those who does both.”
The proverbial bovine sacrifice should help Goldman improve re-
turns as it spends to scale up its technology ($1.3 billion on the consum-
er business alone, so far). But it also means fewer luxury perks for em-
ployees. Some senior bankers lament having to fly coach on trips where
in the good old days they sat in business class; Goldman now discour-
ages anyone but partners from gliding into the line of black cars waiting
outside the bank’s New York headquarters to get to meetings, telling
them to take Uber instead. Solomon says expense policy decisions are
too small-potato to involve him directly, but they reflect an increasing
rigor toward expenses and productivity. “I think the way that David
thinks when we say ‘operating efficiency’ is: Everyone here is cost,” says
Stephanie Cohen, the firm’s chief strategy officer. “You’re a cost.”
S
INCE GOLDMAN SACHS LAUNCHED its first credit card, in
partnership with Apple, over the summer, Solomon has
been workshopping a new party trick. It starts with the
phrase, “Take out your phone.” In a two-minute routine
requiring a few swipes and the last four digits of your So-
cial Security number, Solomon has been virtually opening Apple Card
accounts for many of his friends and acquaintances. “It’s pretty easy,
right?” he says, adding, “It’s not perfect.”
The Apple Card—tailor-made for the iPhone’s mobile wallet, with
a numberless titanium physical counterpart—was a partnership that
grew out of Marcus, the fledgling consumer bank within Goldman
Sachs that made its debut in 2016. The card was code-named “Project
Cookie” inside the bank; Apple itself was known as “Saturn”—perhaps
because Goldman, as one of its partners, was treated like one of many
moons in its orbit. Goldman’s logo, along with Mastercard’s, ended up
on the back of the white metal rectangle (and is nowhere to be seen on
the virtual version).
The credit card’s development has been a telling parable about a
bank exploring a new business a century and a half into its existence,
and at times finding itself out of its league. Goldman until recently never
fancied itself a retail banker, even after a financial- crisis era change to its
regulatory status allowed it to become one. “I think we were in denial,”
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