Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon finally addressed the long-running controversy over his DJ hobby, insisting that playing records will not become a distraction as he seeks to shore up sagging profits at the Wall Street giant.
“If going public in any way distracts Goldman Sachs, my number one focus is Goldman Sachs,” the 61-year-old banker said. the boss told the Financial Times at the Global Banking Summit in London this week.
“My daughter got married a month and a half ago, I was a DJ at her wedding. It is still a hobby, it is a passion,” she added.
Solomon’s comments came a year after his disc-jockey alter ego, DJ D-Sol, hung up his headphones at high-profile events after attracting unwanted media attention.
Through the first nine months of 2023, Goldman’s profits plunged more than 30%, weighed down by the bank’s $3 billion loss on its consumer baking businesses over the past three years, as well as a writedown of 506 million dollars in GreenSky.
Profits in the last quarter fell 36%, although the latest report was not as dismal as the second quarter’s huge 58% drop.
Until recently, Solomon had been playing records in dance clubs frequently since 2015, three years before he was named Goldman’s leader.
He began landing high-profile DJ gigs starting in 2019 after landing a spot on the bill for Tomorrowland, the European dance music festival known for its undulating crowds of naked, sweaty and drugged-out revelers, a move that upset the board. Goldman board.
Representatives for Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Solomon, however, did not seem fazed by any of the bank’s problems when he spoke about how Goldman plans to scale back its “growth at any cost” strategy in China during the FT banking summit.
“I think this is something that will take years to resolve because there are real differences,” Solomon said of the tensions between Washington and Beijing, according to the FT.
“I think the best path to resolution is for the United States and China itself to actively talk,” he also told the outlet, a few weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly rebuked efforts to reduce economic dependence on the United States. from China while meeting with President Biden for the first time on American soil.
Goldman, meanwhile, has long invested in the world’s second-largest economy and opened its Hong office more than 40 years ago, in 1994.
The bank, which reportedly has about $2.5 trillion in assets under management, also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Taipei.
Solomon said that five years ago Goldman was executing a strategy that was more “growth at all costs in China.”
“Nowadays, it’s a more conservative approach [in China] and we have probably cut back on some of our financial resources there, simply because there is more uncertainty,” he told the Financial Times.
And while participating on a panel at the summit, Solomon argued that in the United States, recent proposals by regulators that would force banks to hold more capital will not make the global financial system safer and could impact the cost of everything, from airfare to pensioners’ retirement savings, according to Bloomberg.
The Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency introduced proposed rules in July, suggesting that America’s largest banks set aside more capital for a variety of different businesses.
If the rules are approved, “the cost will increase significantly,” Solomon said of unsecured derivatives, which he said airlines often use to hedge the price of jet fuel so they can have stability in their prices, according to Bloomberg.
“I don’t think it’s materially changing safety and soundness in the way that matters versus friction and cost,” he added of the proposed rules, known as the end of Basel III in the United States.
“You have to do a really thorough cost-benefit analysis,” Solomon said. “I don’t think that was done.”
