Goldman CEO's Year of Empty Offices, Island Getaways and Strife
The Goldman Sachs Gulfstream descended into the sun-kissed Bahamas that Friday with a familiar passenger aboard: David Solomon.
It was the final days of February, and Solomon, the chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., had booked another weekend getaway on the new jet -- his seventh in as many weeks.
Behind him in New York, the bank’s workforce was left buzzing over his public bashing of work from home, an arrangement he labeled an “aberration” that needs to be fixed. The remarks capped months of grousing to lieutenants about his perception that for some employees it’s more home than work.
In many ways, it should all be sunny at Goldman Sachs: Its Wall Street businesses are booming, the stock is on a tear and the bank finally put to rest the 1MDB scandal that dogged it for six years. Instead, the firm is riveted by palace intrigue over executive defections, bristling over the use of company jets for personal trips and debating how flexible the workplace will be after Covid subsides.
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The planes have been used for business, such as scouting office locations in Florida and Texas. They’ve also served as pandemic vacation ferries, making almost a dozen getaways -- mostly to the Bahamas, but also locales in the Caribbean and Montana.
“It certainly looks terrible,” said Nell Minow, who advises institutional investors on corporate governance issues as vice chair at ValueEdge Advisors. “There is a Marie Antoinette aspect to it.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-14/goldman-ceo-s-year-of-empty-offices-island-getaways-and-strife
