Goldman Sachs promoted a new generation of leaders on Wednesday, as Gary D. Cohn, its longtime No. 2 executive, leaves the Wall Street bank to join President-elect Donald J. Trump’s incoming administration.
In replacing Mr. Cohn as president and chief operating officer, Goldman turned to two senior executives, David M. Solomon and Harvey M. Schwartz. They will share both jobs as co-heads, the first time in seven years that Goldman has had that structure for its second-in-command.
And it picked R. Martin Chavez, its chief information officer, to succeed Mr. Schwartz as the firm’s chief financial officer in April. Mr. Chavez, who will serve as deputy chief financial officer until then, will be one of the highest-ranking Latino and gay executives on Wall Street.
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Those three men, along with two other executives who were also promoted, represent a new group of potential successors to Goldman’s current chairman and chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein. He assumed the firm’s top role a decade ago — after his predecessor, Henry M. Paulson Jr., left to become Treasury secretary under George W. Bush. Mr. Blankfein, 62, has shown little inclination to leave that post.
Mr. Cohn, a trader by background who rose through the Goldman ranks alongside Mr. Blankfein, functioned for years as the C.E.O.’s top lieutenant and as one of the firm’s top emissaries to Washington and beyond. Though he had waited for a chance at the top job, Mr. Cohn is leaving to become director of the National Economic Council, a leading economic adviser to the president and a role created in the early 1990s — and first occupied by another Goldman alumnus, Robert E. Rubin.
His departure comes as Goldman has been losing many top executives of his generation in the last several years. Among them are Michael Sherwood, co-head of Goldman Sachs International; J. Michael Evans and Mark Schwartz, successive leaders of the bank’s Asia Pacific operations; and David A. Viniar, who served as chief financial officer from the firm’s 1999 initial public offering until his retirement in 2013.
Those departures have left room for younger executives like Mr. Solomon and Mr. Schwartz to take on more prominent roles.
Mr. Solomon is currently one of three heads of Goldman’s investment bank, which is one of Wall Street’s top advisers to companies around the world. He is not a lifetime Goldman employee, however: He joined the firm as a partner in 1999, after working at Bear Stearns, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Salomon Brothers and the Irving Trust Company.
By contrast, Mr. Schwartz has worked at Goldman for most of his career, after a stint at Citicorp, He joined Goldman as a salesman in its J. Aron unit in the mid-1990s, rising through the trading division to become its co-head in 2008. Three years ago, he became chief financial officer after Mr. Viniar’s retirement.
Then there is Mr. Chavez, who as chief information officer has helped spearhead Goldman’s attempt to become as much a technology company as it is a financial powerhouse, overseeing its roughly 9,000 computer engineers. A fast-rising star in the firm, he also began his career in the J. Aron trading division, though he left Goldman to join the Swiss bank Credit Suisse and then to found a trading-software start-up. He returned to the firm in 2005 as a partner.
Goldman elevated two other men on Wednesday, Richard J. Gnodde and Pablo J. Salame, to vice chairmen. Mr. Gnodde, a 29-year Goldman veteran based in London, is a co-chief executive of Goldman’s international unit and a co-head of investment banking. Mr. Salame, who has been at Goldman for two decades, currently serves as co-head of the trading division.
“These five leaders have distinguished themselves in their respective areas of expertise, and I look forward to working with them in formulating and executing our global strategy,” Mr. Blankfein said in a statement. “They have consistently demonstrated their unwavering commitment to Goldman Sachs, our clients and our people.”.
source”cnbc”
