Wednesday 14 March 2012

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs By Greg Smith


I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail.

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.

2 comments:

fonfon said...

Why on earth would you give this guy air time on your site? Do you not realise that this is a self promotional piece; which he hopes will aide him setting up his own advisory firm come the end of his gardening leave from GS. The tone from him could not be more concieted. I am shocked this has got published in the NYT in the first place, they will no doubt already be regretting this.

Austerity Britain said...

Why on earth wouldn't I give this air time? It's all over the internet, led by the NYT, the Guardian and the Telegraph.

Yes, there may be personal selfish reasons why he wrote such a public letter of resignation, but for whatever reason, it gets people’s attention focused on what goes on behind closed doors and that's always a good thing.

What he does now is up to his own conscience.

I'm happy this information has started a phenomenal and hopefully, long lasting, media discussion.