You may heard about, from the twittersphere/blogosophere or many hours later, the MSM, the fiery resignation of a top Goldman Sachs executive last night in the US.
His take on the change in the corporate culture at what has been infamously called “the vampire squid” is eye-opening to the lay, non financial reader, but no surprise to those of us who have seen this culture endemic throughout the FIRE (financial, insurance and real estate) sector.
Here’s my favourite snippet of the letter, fully published in the New York Times, and I wonder if our “leaders” can learn from this?
How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
And Bloomberg’s take – will he ever work on Wall Street again – but more importantly, will Wall Street really care about this exposition?