A very shocking story took shape this week with a mid-level executive at Goldman Sachs announcing his resignation via an Op-Ed piece on the New York Times where he let the public know about the money hungry culture that exists in the global investment bank where profit comes first before clients.
This was the first time that an investment banker has been so public in letting others know how much he disliked the work culture at the bank. As a result of this, share prices of Goldman Sachs tumbled and fell by 3.4 percent and the bulge bracket lost somewhere around $2 billion. There has been a mixed reaction with people at Goldman pointing out that he is mistaken and others very happy with his outspokenness.
This news story has rocked the world of finance and Smith talks about how senior-level bosses referred to their clients as muppets in his ‘resignation letter’ that is titled “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs”. Smith also pointed to Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and President Gary Cohn as responsible for what Smith calls “a toxic and destructive culture” that exists at the firm.
All this is coming from a ‘low-drama’ executive and the Op-Ed even shocked those close to Smith. But then again Smith doesn’t seem to have been the stereotypical Wall Street type and for a long time when he started his career at Goldman and began climbing the ranks, he actually rented an apartment and never purchased a car.
So this attempt at trying to bring justice so to speak isn’t entirely out of character, but many investment bankers and those at Goldman point to what they feel is his stagnant career as the cause for this. Smith was getting paid less than norm for a mid-level executive making less than $750K annually.