Greg Smith: I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.
Greg Smith is resigning today [March 14th] as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
This base level attack on Goldman Sacks by one of its own is most relevant – does Mr Smith have an agenda is the question that comes to mind? He mentions Leadership and how it’s achieved – is there sour grapes there … was he overlooked … what is his motive to dump on his employer is the question that hangs out there.
If what Mr Smith states above is correct in its context – it has been that way for a very long time. He mentions his 12 years there – this hardly frees him from the guilt attached to the build up to the GFC in 2008 – the 12 year time-line tracks back to the 9/11 era and the bountiful spend by the then Bush Government to fight a War and Terrorism in its aftermath. The markets became awash with funds – and Mr Smith would have had his snout in the Goldman Sacks pig-trough during this era.
Maybe it has taken 12 years for his conscious to gnaw its way to his soul – how much of the 10’s of millions he would have received in bonus’s will he now give back? Is he really motivated by the ‘cultural’ change he has overseen and made mention of – if he is determined to expose this ‘toxic culture’ he so vehemently despises in his open letter – let him confess all his sins first?