Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs' ex-CEO smoked weed and was too dominant in meetings. How to make $1m from 3 months' work as a banking analyst

Lloyd Blankfein, the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, has written a book. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he says he's done so partly to explain himself to his children, who noticed his absence during their formative years. It might also be an opportunity to apologise to his wife, whom he hung up upon during personal calls in favour of clients. More generally, it's a paean to the awkward youth who becomes the billionaire.

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Blankfein would not have ended up as Goldman Sachs CEO were it not for the influence of some 'religious Christians' he met at Harvard University. Blankfein - who grew up in Brookyln was living alone in his second year at Harvard, neglecting his studies and smoking 'weed and hash.' An extract from his book published in Vanity Fair, details how the Christians, who were serious about their studies, invited him into their 'roommate group.' Blankfein joined them, became more confident, developed a love of history and briefly became a lawyer before becoming a precious metals salesman at J. Aron & Co, a commodities broker bought by Goldman.

Despite presumably leaving the weed in the lonely dorm, Blankfein wasn't the finished article for a long time at Goldman Sachs. His book includes a performance review from 2002, when he was aged 48, two years before he became Goldman president and COO. This review says that Blankfein was too "dominant in meetings," that he could be "overly harsh, adversarial, and intimidating," that he somehow needed to win every "debate or argument" and that he should become "more statesmanlike and positive."

Blankfein nonetheless became CEO of Goldman Sachs in 2006. This was fortunate because - by his own admission - "In a big crisis, I’m generally the most rational person around."

Blankfein wasn't raised upper middle class, or even middle class. He grew up in a cramped flat with furniture wrapped in plastic and a cockroach extermination business nearby. But Blankfein became CEO of Goldman. Now he has a flat in Miami where he spends the winter and a house in the Hamptons where he spends the summer. His daughter says he's "human." His wife has stayed with him for 42 years, even though, when a client called midway through Blankfein explaining to her that he had cancer in 2015, he "disconnected" and left her hanging. "What a terrible thing to do to her,” he laments.

Separately, no one knows how much Centerview settled ex-21-year-old banking analyst Kathryn Shiber's case for, but the suspicion is that it might have been for seven figures.

As we reported last week, Shiber spent less than three months at Centerview before being fired because she needed eight hours' sleep a night due to a preexisting anxiety disorder. She argued that she was discriminated against. 

Centerview says it was confident of winning the case had it gone to trial, but that "we are nonetheless happy to put this distraction behind us and focus on delivering for our clients."    

There are suggestions that banks won't be employing junior bankers with pre-existing conditions in the future. Shiber had wanted $5m+ in compensation. She's currently thought to be working for a dog food delivery company after a stint at Google. 

Meanwhile...

If you work for Accenture and you don't adopt AI tools, you won't get promoted. (Financial Times) 

Private equity firms spent a record $348bn investing in software companies in 2021. “Have we had groupthink where you’ve got 30% or 40% of buyouts being in software? In retrospect, it was a pretty big red flag.” Apollo insists it has zero exposure. (Bloomberg)  

UK bankers are paying marginal tax rates on their bonuses of 71% once student loans are added in. Moving to the Middle East is a "repeat conversation" as a result. (Financial Times) 

Retail banks want to build sales and trading businesses as revenues are steadier than before. At JPMorgan, the variation of quarterly trading revenues has fallen by a third over the past five years compared with the prior five — even as the revenue base has grown. (Financial Times) 

Lloyd Blankfein is not a fan of loading pensions with private credit assets: "I think it’s crazy to put those assets there and I think it’s crazy from their point of view. They have nice lives, they make a fortune, their companies are huge, they already own their yachts and whatever it is they want...These securities are opaque and may be riskier than most, but to the extent you’re selling to institutions people don’t care that much. But if individuals lose money or insurance companies or real businesses lose money it’s terrible." (WSJ)  

"I went fully “beige” and chose to do an accountancy degree because I believed that would win me a job, a career. I thought I was being sensible. Now I can't get a job." (The Times) 

Even minimum wage jobs now require two hour interviews, online applications with 10 paragraphs on work experience and assessment days with 30 candidates solving anagrams and completing quizzes. (Guardian) 

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