talk to us about what's going on with
our good friends at Goldman
a couple of weeks
they saw press reports that Goldman
Sachs was going to go deeper than any of
its mainstream banking peers with a
pullback that could be up to 4 000 jobs
getting cut or about eight percent of
their Workforce of course until
yesterday Goldman itself hadn't
confirmed any of that but in his
traditional year-end message Goldman
Sachs CEO David solman really didn't
come in with that typical holiday cheer
he spent almost is it usually full of
holiday chair and amongst the DJing even
if it's not a lot of the holiday cheer
it is a lot of the rallying the troops
and encouraging them for the year ahead
congratulating on the year that just
went by but this one about two-thirds of
the message was dedicated to talking
about the head count reduction and
perhaps he's right in doing that you
might as well give them the harsh
medicine up front because he gave us a
little bit of news yesterday when he
said that the job Cuts will be coming as
soon as the first half of January so
that's just a matter of weeks and if
they do go ahead with job cuts that
amount to what three thousand three
thousand five hundred four thousand jobs
you might as well want people on guard
even if it's the last week of December
and that's when the CEO went out and
said it's a very uncertain 2023 that
we're entering there are a lot of
pressures on the business he's already
talked about it in the past including
with Bloomberg television about the
pressures that they have been facing on
their own expense line and with that
increased investor focus on cars Goldman
Sachs wants to get out ahead of the
narrative it already knows it's unlikely
to meet its return on Equity targets and
it needs to show investors it needs to
show its shareholders that it recognizes
that and it's taking measures and steps
to address that it cares about margin
but also is it because we through covid
got rather used to a lack of culling a
lack of this getting rid of the Bottom
Rung that we're all anticipated usually
year in year out over the likes of
Goldman across the banks many of the
banks came out and made this pledge that
they would not cut through the pandemic
Goldman Sachs in fact was one of the
banks because they weren't completely
true to that pledge they did carry out
some Cuts especially in late 2020 but by
and large it was nothing like what they
typically tend to do and their Workforce
in the last few years I believe since
the end of 2018 through the third
quarter of 2022 has grown about 34 to
more than 49 000 people so there's
clearly been a lot of growth they've
nibbled away at a number of Acquisitions
so there has been an inflation in their
ranks
perhaps more than the price of your
steak last night so they clearly see
that there is room for making some Cuts
there is room to become leaner and
that's what they're aiming for because
that's the message they want to send
remember next month they come out with
earnings and of course sounds like with
these job Cuts announcements around the
same time a month after that they will
undertake another investor day Goldman
Sachs typically has never done that it's
never had investor days for its
shareholders they came out with a debut
invested in 2019 that was the first time
ever that Goldman Sachs did it and of
course they met a lot of those targets
but it's unclear how much of that was
strategy realignment and how much of
that was pure luck of covet and the
pandemic and the windfall that it
Unleashed on Wall Street but three years
later the pressures are very different
now we're going from a windfall era for
the banks to something that looks like a
more normalized environment and where
strategy is what will help differentiate
One Bank from another and that's what
Goldman X is eyeing and that's where
they want to go in and give a proper
message to give shareholders some reason
for cheer because this stock doesn't
have the same kind of enthusiasm from
investors as some of their main peers
and they want to address that and they
want to correct that