Morning Coffee: The Goldman Sachs guy who turned down $500m for perks. Paris bankers are shocked that they can be laid off too
It seems kind of premature to be thinking about who’s going to be the next CEO of Goldman Sachs. David Solomon is only 63 years old (Jamie Dimon is 69), and he was reappointed to another five year term eight weeks ago. Barring some kind of horrible unforeseeable accident (of either the medical or compliance variety), he’s in the job until 2030.
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Nonetheless, John Waldron, the man who wanted to be a writer but who found himself at Goldman Sachs, is increasingly looking like the name in the frame. Notably, he’s now seemingly been endorsed by Ashok Varadhan, the co-head of global banking and markets. Varadhan is seen by many as a “kingmaker” figure who speaks for the consensus of Goldman partners, so when he says things like “he’s transcended all the divisions…[and] had a lens into every single business unit for a sustained period of time”, and is prepared to be quoted in the Financial Times, that’s pretty good news.
It's also a change in Waldron's fortunes. Not long ago, the FT says Waldron was out of favour. He'd had been considering leaving Goldman to work for Apollo and Apollo was offering Waldron as much $500m to move according to people in a position to know. Waldron gave it a pass.
Being "bid back" with a counteroffer is usually frowned upon by banks. The rule is that once you’ve been “bid back” from an alternative offer, you’ll never be fully trusted again. This doesn't seem to have been the case for Waldron.
Instead, he seems to have decided to stay at the firm and to take Goldman's money and Goldman's perks. These included an $80m retention bonus, the chance of being CEO, “expanded personal use” of the company jet, a seat on the board and presumably a few other tidbits.
Waldron presumably thought all this was worth more than $500m from Apollo, but he could yet find himself in a difficult spot. He already has a reputation as a “banker whisperer” when it comes to persuading other disgruntled executives not to leave the bank. What if Waldron has to turn that skill to the retention of people Dan Dees or Marc Nachman who would be his rivals in a JPMorgan-style marathon to become CEO?
If he has those conversations, Waldron might do well to remember the Italian proverb that “He who enters the conclave as pope, leaves it as a cardinal”. When the rumours first started that he was back in pole position, we suggested that Goldman might have wanted a Dan Pinto figure to be the clear “just in case” successor. Pinto has since left JPMorgan and five years is a long time. The perks of the private jet may win thin before Waldron gets to Solomon's seat.
Elsewhere, a year ago bankers were relatively happy at the idea of a “special deal” for the French financial sector, carving it out of French labour laws in order to encourage even more global banks to relocate jobs there. The idea that anyone might actually be made redundant in Paris, the tightest and hottest of all labour markets throughout 2023 and early 2024, was outlandish.
Plus ça change. Deals dried up, the French government collapsed, and many banks put their expansion plans on hold. Morgan Stanley won't be hiring another 100 people in Paris after all. Nine people were recently cut from JP Morgan for “economic reasons”. It’s now a great market to be a specialist French labour lawyer, taking a 10% cut of any increased severance agreement you’re able to negotiate.
It’s not necessarily a case of “après moi, le deluge”, however. Paris has cemented itself as the financial capital of Euroland, and EMEA is doing much better than North America for capital markets and M&A business. There are even some mid-market banks like Piper Sandler who are still setting up new offices there. But it’s a bit of a shock to the system for French bankers, who have enjoyed such favourable conditions for so long, to realise that they are not wholly insulated to global shocks.
Meanwhile …
Deutsche Bank is aiming to cut 2,000 jobs from its retail banking network. Given the complexities of doing this with German unions and labour regulators, that’s likely to take up a considerable amount of C-Suite bandwidth, although it does put more pressure on the investment bank to deliver its side of the profitability. (FT)
Adam Hoffman was a student campaigner against wokeness in 2022, graduated from Princeton in 2023, was working in the “Office of the CEO” for Ken Griffin at Citadel in 2024 and has now joined up with Elon Musk’s DOGE in 2025. Who knows what 2026 may bring? (Bloomberg)
Anna Cross, the Barclays CFO, has said that she is strictly monitoring returns on a client-by-client basis, and that capital could be taken out of the investment bank if some relationships don’t make cross-selling targets. (Reuters)
More likely to reflect back- and mid-office than front office jobs given the source, but data from Indeed.com show a very material drop in the proportion of investment banking vacancies which are being advertised as offering the potential for remote working. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t available, but it suggests the promise isn’t being made. (The Banker)
Before becoming CEO of DWS, Stefan Hoops was the rising star of Deutsche Bank. So it made sense that when he needed traders to repair a problematic private credit business, he turned to his former colleagues. (Bloomberg)
A wealth manager for UBS had an affair with his client’s wife, and consequently the extremely messy divorce proceedings are also going to have an element of “breach of fiduciary duty”. You might ask why this sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time, and the answer is apparently “it does”; financial advisors have nothing in their regulatory or professional requirements to forbid romantic entanglements like doctors and lawyers. (Bloomberg)
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