David Solomon, CEO, Goldman Sachs

[Music] and whose track was that David welcome to Stanford we are so excited to have you at the view from the top series thank you thank you for having me I'm thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity spend some time with you tonight so if it's okay I want to jump right in absolutely I was doing some very rigorous research which started with a Google search on you to get ready for this interview and what I typed your name two options came up which may or may not show up here oh there we go it looks like we have David Solomon Goldman and then David Solomon DJ naturally I clicked the first and that seemed you know what you might expect Wall Street CEO sure and I thought well you know why don't we why don't you skip ahead to the second here I thought this couldn't be the same David Solomon and then I realized that in fact I had the right David Solomon but there were two versions of David Solomon we have Wall Street CEO and DJ if it's okay I would love to explore both of those sides of you today in this interview if there's a third let me know look at food so we have an audience of mostly students I would love to start to think about where you were as you sat in the seats that we're all sitting in thinking about graduation from Hamilton College considering your next steps in your career and the extent that you had a plan or a journey you were going on I'd love to hear what was going to your mind sure and you know I just I think about that you know I think about you know who I was and and what I thought about what was important to me when I was a student at Hamilton College in the early 1980s and I just say for starters the world was a very very different place I see it through the eyes of my two daughters who are now in their 20s but their their focus on what they want to do where they were gonna go how they were gonna build a career you know what they were studying how it was connected with undergraduate students and now one of them is a graduate student it was just at a completely different level of both focus and maturity than mine was when I was sitting in the seat at Hamilton College you know if I'm honest I'm not sure that I would have come to see the CEO of Goldman Sachs speak if the CEO of goldman sachs was ever on the hamilton college campus which well actually he might have been Hamilton College has a great has a great legacy of goldman sachs partners and so um so who knows but it was probably unlikely but I was you know I was I was going through school I thought I want to go to law school my-my parents particularly my mother you know had a view that you had to have a profession and to her that were really there was a profession and then there was a secondary profession if you weren't going to pursue the first profession the profession for a nice Jewish boy who grew up in Westchester County was he had to go to medical school and yet to be a doctor that was the profession when it was clear that I was going to work through four years of Hamilton college without taking a physical science that would probably exclude medical school is something that I could seriously consider there was then an open door to the second profession which was law school and you know somehow I kind of went through Hamilton College as an economics major history minor thinking that I would go to law school but somehow I kind of stumbled into working and financing I think it really came from the fact and it's kind of interesting because I look at myself and I think about myself in the way you know I'm wired I was more of a follower when I was kind of thinking about this stuff coming out of school I it was the early 80s Wall Street really hadn't exploded if you're if you're a student of Finance in the history of Finance the 1960s 70s into the early 80s finance was really nowhere the stock market went nowhere for a long period of time the businesses were small Michie businesses but in the early 80s the banks were starting to hire people the concept of an analyst program was created in the early right when I was getting out of school and it was this opportunity to go to work for what was a very very nice wage live in New York with your friends and get a further education and so I applied to Goldman Sachs didn't get a job well I do a number of places didn't get a job I wanted to get a job at the Irving Trust Company which was a commercial bank I really had no idea what a commercial bank did it wasn't necessary in that day and age to be as sophisticated and knowledgeable you were really interviewed at that point in time as to who you were not what you knew about the profession you were trying to pursue and so I wound up with a job at the Irving Trust Company it was twenty two thousand five hundred dollars a year which seemed like a monstrous amount of money coming out of college it allowed me to live in New York City with a few of my college buddies and you know off I went and I'd say stumbled into it I really had no idea that I would pursue a career in finance but it was a job I needed a job and in those early years you moved to firms that were giants on Wall Street at the time from drexel burnham to bear stearns later there's somewhat of an irony yeah exactly see there's a pattern here where those firms were the place you went to work if you could really make it on Wall Street at the time today they don't exist what do you take from that when you look back on that experience both of hopping around but also being at places that everyone thought would last the test of time well Wall Street if you're if you're Stu to the history of Finance of Wall Street Wall Street is a giant graveyard of firms that have gone out of business financial firms are generally levered entities and you know history is filled with financial firms that have gone away I happen to work in two of them and I mean we have the story as to how I wound up there it's actually interesting because they came out of Hamilton college I didn't have a business background in the early 1980s if you were working on Wall Street the way the malla was set up as you went you worked for two years as an analyst and then you were fired and you had to go back to business school you had to go to graduate school 98% of the people that are my generation in finance with the business school I was applying a Business School in 1985 and well sure I was gonna go back to business school because I decided hey you know this finance thing is kind of interesting I'd like to go back to business school again there's a little bit of a follower all my friends were applying to business school and and while I was applying at a cocktail party I met a headhunter a guy whose name is Gary Goldstein who had a firm called the Whitney group still exists I mean he's still up you know a headhunter in New York City at a cocktail party and he talked to me for 20 minutes and he said I have to introduce you to somebody and he went he introduced me to somebody at drexel burnham and at the time mike milken's jump on business was you know kind of you know rising to the peak of what it would become and because junk bonds dealt with the credit of companies I had had a credit training a formal credit training in a bank there was a group that was part of the jump on business there that was hiring liberal arts majors because they thought they had great communication skills that had worked at banks and had credit backgrounds so they could actually sell and talk about these securities and I got hired to work at drexel burnham and the salary they were offering was basically a salary package that was ahead of what I would get if I went to business school and came out and got an entry-level job outside of you know after business school so I remember talking to my dad about it my dad was like look go give it a try you know it's it's it's a hot firm at the moment doesn't mean it'll be a hot firm forever I remember him saying and he said but if it doesn't work out after a couple years you're still young enough you can go back to school if you want and so I went off and started working at drexel burnham it was a really interesting experience yeah a lot of rope it was very entrepreneurial it was very open you know Wall Street in the 1980s was kind of the entrepreneurial tech environment if you want to make a comparison in some ways and it just kind of worked and I did very very well but what didn't work is Mike Milken went to jail and ultimately in in 1990 drexel burnham went out of business but there was a lot there was a lot there was a lot of really good stuff at drexel burnham but boy I learned a lot of lessons about what can go wrong you know in a financial services firm and so suddenly in 1990 I was out of a job I hadn't been to business school and and you know you had to had to forge ahead but it was it was a very it was it was a great learning experience it was a humbling experience but I think I think net net was a positive experience was a good decision was there questions in your family when you didn't go to the path of Medicine at that time my mom there were all sorts of questions with my with my mom you know and you know unfortunately neither neither my parents are still around and actually one of the things that I really you know both of them died in their 70s and one of the things that I really regret is you know they watched me for a good portion of my career and I wish they were around so that I could share with them you know some of what you know what I what I'm experiencing today but there were a lot of things with my mom you know my mom my mom my mom didn't like that I didn't pursue a profession my mom didn't like that I married I was Jewish boy you married a Catholic girl my mom didn't like the fact that that I want to have a wedding on Saturday night that started before the Sun went down I mean there were a lot of things with my mom that it didn't it didn't quite John but I think I think she loved me unconditionally but um but but you know she she made it clear you know what what she thought about the various choices I remember there my grandmother when I went to a liberal arts school and studied government I hadn't yet told her I was gonna study government and she said honey tell me what you're gonna study I'm not going to judge you I won't say how are you gonna get it you know just tell me what you're thinking I said well grandma I think I'm gonna study government she said how are you gonna get a job so there's real family pressures to follow the path there definitely are family pressures everybody has family pressures yeah you've got a you know for about my my you know my my mom for all the pressure she put you know she she definitely there are a bunch of things about my motivation of my drive that clearly come from my mom and she you know she she somehow translated kind of a spirit of discipline that has helped me enormous ly you know professionally and personally you know at times now my dad gave me a whole bunch of other things that that I appreciate especially you know with respect to really enjoying life and living life to the fullest but um but they were they were a great combination and and you know both had a profound impact on me shaping me professionally personally in ways that I only appreciate now you know that I miss them and they're gone looking ahead a few years when you went into Goldman as a lateral hire so you didn't go through the ranks obviously it wasn't clear or at least to me it wasn't clear what the path forward you felt would be and where you would go from there when you join the firm that wasn't the way to go from what it seemed like at the time what was going through your mind and what made that decision work for you you you you um you know you skip Bear Stearns which i think is something that it's worth just touching on for a minute because Bear Stearns was there Stearns was a pretty meaningful firm you know in the 1990s it it did not have the reputation of um you know firm like Goldman Sachs but it was a scrappy firm but it had a good reputation and it was a true you know meritocracy the person that produced or impacted you know rose very quickly in that organization and I am I thrived there you know after after um after Drexel after Drexel went out of business I went with a group of people for a very very short time to Salomon Brothers by the way another firm that doesn't exist and but but it didn't take there were six of us from Drexel Burnham and went there as a group because Salomon Brothers wanted to really advance in the junk bond business and we were just all miserable and so within one year five of the six of us left two of the six of us to Bear Stearns to try to bolster its business there and we started to really really have some success the business really went away part of the reason direction went out of business is in 1990 there was a massive credit contraction um if you go back and you look at the market cap of banks the market cap of Citibank in 1990 was four billion dollars the market cap of Citibank in 2000 was 250 million dollars so a lot happened 1990 and 2000 but a 1990 credit had been credit had been squeezed the Savings & Loan industry was going out of business but by 1991 92 you know all that started reversing and the junk bond business kind of took off and you know we built a pretty big business at Bear Sterns and by the middle of the 1990s both of us were on the ten person management committee at Bear Stearns and so we were you know we're among the top ten people running the farm I was you know I was am I was 33 years old and so I really thought I was gonna stay at Bear Sterns forever and I was certainly you know at a very young age in a position where I had a big career there but I started as I understood the business more to appreciate its limitations and you know the advantages that existed in other businesses and I had a number of opportunities that came my way during the 1990s summit were super interesting I was I was recruited a number of times although I never went by David Rubenstein who was running Carlyle to go build a credit business at Carlyle and certainly if I had done that in the mid-1990s you know it would have been a it would have been it would have been a good economic decision but for some reason I liked being in a big organization and so in the late 90s I started getting recruited you know go go to Goldman Sachs and it happened because I met a partner at Goldman Sachs competing for a deal the deal was to finance Sheldon Adelson and the building of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas it was a 1.2 billion dollar financing and I had done a bunch of work in the 1990s financing the development of casino hotels it was actually a good business because the bank's wouldn't lend money the casino business in the 1980s had really been controlled by the mob and it was finally cleaned up by the government in the mid 80s and it was starting to prove proliferate around the country and so you can pay a lot of money to raise this goldman sachs that stayed away from the business but by the late 1990s they were like you know we should we should enter this business and so we started competing for this business and I noticed that I had been talking to Sheldon Adelson for 10 years and had a real relationship with him Goldman Sachs showed up and they were just Goldman Sachs and all the sudden Sheldon Adelson wanted to do business with Goldman Sachs he wanted he aspired he was a young entrepreneur who aspired to be affiliated with Goldman Sachs that was very you know that was very powerful I understood it but it was a very you know a very tangible example of it and so after that transaction because I spent a lot of time with this this gentleman John Michael Reed who was opposite me John went on to become co-president at Goldman Sachs John started recruiting me and I really spent some time thinking about it and I really said you know I'm committed to this I like big organizations I think I do well in a big organizational structure if you're gonna be in this industry and you're going to you know really this is really what you want to do you know career-wise you might as well play for the Yankees and I had to take a step back you know people viewed it as a step back but it was a really it turned out to be a really good decision for me and none of had I not gotten here if I just go on and work there for 10 years it would have been a really good decision there were a whole variety of reasons that then I got exposure to things in a different way when I entered Goldman Sachs that if I had not chosen to do that you know what had a very different experience in hindsight that's easy to kind of think through at the time I think people called it shocking when you decided to leave Bear Stearns but Bear Stearns were shocked so Holloway I was shocked I lost in the in the two months in the two months that I really wrestled with whether or not to do it I lost 15 pounds so we all try that by the way I don't I don't recommend I don't recommend serious serious stress as a weight loss strategy okay you know it actually is quite effective if you're really really stressed out you're not eating yeah so that is the third dimension you say there's a third side to you we found it no so you say you go and play for the Yankees and in the early 2000s it's very clear you are playing for the Yankees and then the world changes in 2008-2009 beyond just the kind of financial impact which we can read about in there will be books many books have already been written on can you just describe in personal terms being in this tailspin and seeing an industry and essentially implode as it was happening just from a solar count yeah I mean so it's a very it's a was a very interesting time and it wasn't just the industry was certainly imploding but the system was imploding the economic system around the world was imploding I overtime is is this became my career I spent a lot of time you know reading about and studying you know systemic risk systemic failure kind of the history of finance going back 150 200 years you know trying to really understand you know could you ever really have a systemic crisis where the system breaks and and you know I believe there was a very important interesting academic exercise but I actually you know in 2007 if we were having a discussion I'd say you could have severe recession but the system had the right kind of guardrails around it that the system couldn't actually break the system broke and by the way it just wasn't the industry the system broke for everybody and the consequences of that were very very severe the narrative is that the banks broke the system that is a vast oversimplification of you know what occurred over a long period of time whenever there is whenever there's crisis and financial markets it comes from buildups over a long period of time comes from excessive leverage over a long period of time and you know in this case the banks had a bunch of exposure and the banks became a significant part of it and the banks you know a lot of mistakes made in the context of the way the banks were run and how the industry involved but you know 2008 was the result of decades of policy toward increasing homeownership and basically creating the tools to allow more people to acquire leverage to own homes in the United States and then spreading the risk of that homeownership around to investors all over the world and ultimately because people really believed that the value of homes in a recession could go down 10 to 20 percent but it couldn't go down war the amount of leverage that was putting in that was too great and ultimately home prices went down a lot more than that and the system collapsed and so if you were in the middle of it I mean it was it was it was horrifying but it wasn't horrifying because you were at a bank it was horrifying because you're in the middle of understanding how the financial system works and how it affects everybody and you know there wasn't a lot that you could do to control it it really needed intervention it needed systemic intervention from governments all over the world and that's what happened there's a consequence from that that we're still dealing with the after effect of but um but it was it was really it was it was a mess and I you know I remember we navigated in from a financial perspective goldman sachs navigated that better than almost any institution from a reputational perspective especially coming out of it we navigated it poorly and you know there was a lot to learn and all that but I I mean I remember I remember in our firm dealing with our issues when I'd also remember as a banker I remember and some of this has been written about this was written about in barbarians at the gate being up in g e--'s offices in the fall of 2008 GE and had 85 billion dollars of commercial paper outstanding commercial paper being short-term loans and there was no way that they could refinance all that and you know GE you know at the end of the day needed to be bailed out it needed to be saved that need to be recapitalized and I walked out of that meeting in 2008 and really realized I got into a car and I made a call and I said you know G G's in real trouble and it was very broad you know across anyone that had financial leverage and it was scary but we were lucky there were leaders who stepped up and made very very difficult decisions at great political expense that really had a profound impact on shoring up showing up the system and and you know that's so I feel like in my mind that began at chapter of immense change across not just Goldman Sachs but the entire industry if it's okay I would love to start to dive into that kind of that picture starting with the change in leadership so we all know there was an official date that you took office taking over a CEO but could you walk us through the the moment you were unofficially told that you were going to be the person and this was to set the stage a very it seemed like from the outside of a two horse race that had a lot of spectators on either side there was a lot of anticipation of who was going to take the helm of goldman sachs going into the hundred fiftieth year the firm what was that like the day you found out it was a weird day that's for sure we can weekend up we can talk about a little you know we skipped a decade obviously which is I asked if we could though right absolutely we can we can only have 55 minutes so we could skip the decade because what are the points what are the points I want to make that I'm not confused about you know there are a lot of reasons why someone gets the opportunity the privilege to run a firm like Goldman Sachs one of them is just dumb luck from a timing perspective and so you know we skipped a decade but one of the things that's important to understand is if Boyd had decided to retire from after the financial crisis to 2016 I wouldn't have been the CEO because of some of the reputational problems the firm had after the financial crisis there was a point in time when it wasn't clear the board would support support Lloyd through all that and had the board not chosen to support him through all that I would not be the CEO well he got sick and had lymphoma in 2015 and you know I think came close to stepping aside at that point if that had happened and he's completely healthy now but if that had happened I would have been the CEO so one of the reasons I had the opportunity to be the CEO is because when Lloyd was ready or the board was ready to transition I happen to be one of the people who was left and around who could compete for it at that moment in time and I think that's an important thing and so I always I never expected to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs the odds were always that it would be somebody else and I would I was so I love my job running Investment Banking I was thrilled when I became Oh chief operating officer but at the time that I became president Co chief operating officer I was told that the other guy was ahead of me he was known by the board he been the CFO for a number of years I never expected to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs so for starters when it actually happened you know at that point I knew that I had a better chance that I thought a year earlier but it was a little bit of a surprise in a typical lloyd way it was a it was a it was a it was a Thursday afternoon and his his my office was there was a conference room next to his office and my office was next to the conference room and when Lloyd wanted to talk to me he had attended cedp basically go David and you could hear out of his office down the hall into my office or somebody that was sitting one of the assistants would say David Lloyd wants to talk to you and so you know I went waddling down to his office and I walked into his office and he said you know I've been working with the board and I made a decision you're gonna be the next person to run goldman sachs i'm gonna have a conversation with harvey in the next week or two and i don't know exactly what the timing is but it's soon not long but i just want to let you know you know you're gonna be the next CEO goldman sachs and i looked at him I said okay I appreciate the windup and the lead-in and how about would you like to sit down and chat I have something important to talk to you about that's the way he was standing there in front of his desk you know with him you know kind of sitting at his desk he kind of he told me this and I kind of said well you know if you don't mind I just want to absorb this a little and he said oh that's that's fine and I said there's probably gonna be some stuff to talk about he said oh yeah sure you know we can talk about it and I kind of a back to my office and kind of sat down on my chair and I was kind of like wow wow I mean wow this actually really happened and then my next my next reaction was oh my god did I just catch the bus by the tailpipe and you know you know I've got to really absorb this is really happening I'm not responsible I've gotta get my mind around this because I wasn't as emotionally prepared for it as I probably should have been so I mean it's it's very open you know kind of account as to how I felt but it was really was a little scared to be honest that that that first moment you know very quickly after that you kind of start to get your head around it and then the excitement starts to build but it's a humbling moment and I want to go back to the kind of thoughts that you felt right afterwards but you touched for a bit on the role of luck and just the way things worked out and I feel at the business school a lot of times we can get over exact on how we think our careers are going to go here you share that progression it's very clear that there are things you can control and there's just things aren't gonna be in your control do you have any advice for us in the audience as we think about graduation coming in June for the second years making the best decision we have and then for what extent you just say you know what they hand me dealt and go for it it's a journey one of the things that I observe a little bit about this I wasn't as purposeful in my decision about where I was going to work and how I was starting my career or how I was continuing my career as people are today I don't I don't think there's anything wrong with that but um but it's a journey and you know I assume most of the students here if they're graduate students are in their mid to late 20s is that a fair assumption you know ballpark so you're you're in the very early part of your professional journey and you know I'm 58 years old I've got a lot of energy I'm certainly gonna work for a while but you know if you're gonna work and by the way if you're in your 20s today chances are you gonna work longer because of progress with respect to health and medicine etc it might not be a straight line they might be on and off etc but you could be working for 50 years it's a long journey there's not you don't have to have it all figured out you don't have to make every decision perfectly you've kind of got to get on the you know start the journey and enjoy the ride and not be so worried you know one of the one of little anecdotes you know I like to talk about just to make this example I have lots of young people to come to me they want to talk so I had you know and a young woman come to me who wanted some advice I known her for a long time she had been working at the firm for three years and he comes in and she said you know want some advice and try to figure out you know where I should go next and what I should do you know next to make sure my career is progress in the way it should and I said okay before we do that you know just tell me a couple of things how do you like a job oh I love it like okay well that's that's good you know what do you like about work is so incredibly interesting every day I'm learning there's variety in what I'm doing I said that's that's really great you feel like you're you know you're really you know all the projects you're going to put on you're learning from every project absolutely I'm learning how do you like your boss oh my god she's amazing what a privilege for me to work for a woman who's really taking an interest in me as a young woman in the business I really feel like I have a rabbi and I'm being mentored I said that's that's really that's really terrific what about the people you're working with oh it's an incredible group they become my best friends were out on the weekends we're having a great time you know I could have imagined that I loved everyone I'm working with and I said great you want my advice go back to work what do you mean next why does it have to be something next just kind of you're in an incredible place where everything's working really well just enjoy it because I guarantee okay it's not always gonna be that way and you know the journey is one where you know there are times where it's it's clicking and there are times when it's not you know one of the things you know one of the things that I used to say is that if you know if you wake up two-thirds of the time and you're really happy with your job you're really lucky and you're in a really good place but I think there are a lot of people that if they have a bad day they start saying okay what am I going to change and you know that's just not what the journey is all about you know get on enjoy the ride they're gonna be ups and downs a lot of stuff will be thrown at you but it's it's it's a long journey and the the the fulfillment and the success in my mind will come from the experiences and the journey not from not from thinking that you've got it all figured out and so back to the moment of taking over and kind of taking us through the next six 12 18 months now it's clear that goldman sachs is a different goldman sachs than it was a generation ago and will be very different than it was then it will be five or ten years from now I don't know if you know this but we were colleagues a few years ago when I interned at Goldman Sachs yep I don't know you were probably busy I was very busy you know ships crossing in the night yeah exactly yeah yeah time for fun too but my dad actually gave me a bell bottom suit that it was wool and pinstriped for a summer internship and split in half on the pant legs the first day of the internship walking into goldman sachs and i got it repaired everything was fine but i remember thinking this suit doesn't match the time that we're in anymore and when you took over the firm you've changed everything from you know open meetings an open public investor day to diversity guidelines and principles to a sustainability practice where you plan to put to work seven hundred fifty billion dollars of capital towards financing investing advisory work towards climate transition and nine other themes around financial inclusion these are really big ideas that we talk about in class rooms and have speakers lecture on but you've made a point to say these changes are are more the must rather than that should can you talk about how you see them sure i think it's important to note though there's no question that that that as i lee goldman sachs i'm evolving it you know i I I read the press and the story line around the first year and a half of my tenure and you know the the press would make it seem like I'm turning the place upside down and I'm really not but like any organization the reason goldman sachs has been around for 150 years is because it always involves it always changes it always figures out what it needs to be to be relevant and successful and any organization has to do that to survive and thrive you know I think there's a natural arc with any leader of an organization that when you're a new leader of an organization you kind of look at the facts the set of facts you have you know what you have and you say okay based on what I've got what's the right set of things to do to move the organization forward and have the best relative performance that you can when you're later in your tenure you get much more defensive and protecting of your legacy and so it's not surprising lloyd ran the firm for over 12 years that he wasn't looking for a significant change you know in the last four or five years and so you know I'm looking for more change because it's my job it's my job to evolve it the big thing I'm trying to evolve with goldman sachs is that the things we talked about in the financial crisis changed the world if you go back 20 years in the united states there were six or seven big banks that had global aspirations and there were five investment banks in the United States that had global aspirations Goldman Sachs was the largest of those five investment banks investment banks dealing with institutional clients early governments and institutions corporations and institutions the the financial crisis kind of changed everything well two things changed in the last 20 years first was the unwinding of glass-steagall which allowed the banks that serve consumer customers to get into Investment Banking businesses going back to the depression in the 1920s or in the early 30s when glass-steagall was created those things were separated and the second thing that happened is coming out of the crisis investment banks went away and everybody became a bank so some investment banks literally went away but the Romanian investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became Bank so now instead of six or seven banks and five investment banks there are six big banks that have global ambitions and goldman sachs is the smallest of those six banks and it's business mix which is still heavily investment banking business that business is a really really good business but it's not growing and so if you're running a public company you have to grow and so the biggest thing I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get Goldman Sachs growing again that's the number one priority and I have us entering and expanding a number of businesses to get us growing but the second thing I'm trying to do is you know I think part of this secret sauce of our organization is the quality of the people that were able to attract to the organization and I think to ensure that or protect that for another generation or another couple of decades the firm has to be different than it's been it was very closed it was very private it was very secretive it was very steadfast in its ways it wasn't open and I've been trying very hard to make it a much more modern organization that I think can continue to be a magnet for talent in a different you know in a different world and so yes I'm you know I'm I'm trying to do things that I think matter but I'm also trying to make the organization you know more open and accessible because I think it would make Goldman Sachs better now in the context of that and we you know we talked a little bit you know earlier when we were talking about purpose and business when you talk about something like sustainability one of the things I've come to appreciate is I'm running this organization where we can do things that really have an impact not just on the organization but on the community more broadly and it's important I think for us so really be focused on things that we think are necessary where we can make a difference and you know I think we're in a position where when you think about sustainability is a broad topic whether it's the environment whether it's you know affordable and accessible healthcare whether it's you know more inclusive Economic Opportunity you know broadly these are things that Goldman Sachs is in a position to help advance and I think it's important that we try to use our resources to do it and so I'm trying to make sure we're very thoughtful and purpose driven and using our resources our assets which are really our people our capital or technology you know to drive not just at serving our clients and ultimately driving performance in our business but ultimately having an impact on society more broadly I think that matters and I think we do that right it will help our relative performance I think it's good for business there is a business case for there's a strong business case for it so we're gonna go to questions in a few minutes I want to ask just in these last couple minutes about you we we touched a lot on the one version of David Solomon we haven't gotten so much of DJ saw DJ D saw you know a few years ago I was working on a book project around people's outside passions at work and I actually I really had heard you were at DJ I really wanted to hear your story and at the time the powers that be you know kind of create us in space and there was a plight kind of this isn't something we want to kind of open up to talk about now that's something you lead with you bring that identity this passion as part of who you are to work or at least to who you are each day well everybody else brings it I you know I show up at work ready to work with my goldman-sachs suit on right it's it's a it's it's it's interesting how it is now a public part of me right it goes wherever I go and I love to know how that feels and and there's so much supportive there's people saying oh that's great you're able to do this and it just seems like that's who you are genuinely from what I can tell that's a part of you but what's what's changed and why now can you can you bring that to the surface well the first the first thing I mean the first thing I need to just talk about a little bit is just two minutes on how I became a DJ because it's it's you know I'm a DJ for 40 years I've always loved music I've always been hugely into music but but I became a DJ it goes back a little bit to the law of the Las Vegas story because I was involved in financing a bunch of these buildings I was having a conversation you know in Las Vegas in 2008 about the changing economic model of a bunch of these buildings clubs were becoming a huge economic engine you know gambling was diminishing restaurants and clubs were becoming a huge economic engine and the amount of money that was being made in these clubs was astronomical and I didn't really understand the economic model and so I went down into a club that was called tryst at the wind and was shown around it's now called intrigue for those of you go to Las Vegas now it it I went down to kind of understand the model this was the beginning of bottle service you know house music and club music electronic dance music were really exploding and DJs we're starting to get paid a lot of money and I went down to see the business model but I love the music and I started finding myself listening to house music and listening to electronic dance music which was a genre of music I knew nothing about and in 2010 I asked I asked a guy named Scott Greenstein who is the president of Sirius XM I said I want to learn about house music we're all about our electronic dance music how can I learn about it and he introduced me to a guy named Paul Oakenfold who will be known to many of you Paul Oakenfold is is you know a long long time deejay who really is kind of the godfather of you know this genre of music going back to the late 80s and Visa in London in in the West Village in the East Village in New York and he's in his 50s and he lives in Los Angeles and I went out and I drink with him in 2010 and we hit it off talking about music talking about life talking about business we hit it off and Paul said to me I should teach you how to DJ I said well that would be cool and I said how do I do that and he said he wrote down you go by these things and you know I'll send you some music and I'll start teaching how to DJ and so I started playing around with it put it on my dining room table and and started playing around with it and you know on the weekends just for fun and he would send me music and after a year or two I was like I want to learn more introduce me to somebody in New York and he introduced me to a DJ a guy named Todd Wilkinson who goes by liquid Todd if any of you listen to be 51 BPM you know liquid Todd because he's a regular on BPM and he started coming to my apartment on Sundays and teaching me how to mix music I played the saxophone in elementary school and through high school so I could read music I understood music theory understood basic key theory and so you know he started teaching me and this one on on Sunday afternoons not all Sunday afternoons but on Sunday afternoons for a number of years and about five six years ago Paul was coming to New York to play at Marquee and he called me he said hey I hear you getting pretty good you know you want to do an hour at Marquee and I'd never DJed anymore but my dining room and and I said well I can't do that he said yes you can pick 10 tracks you'll mix them together and he said don't worry about it it'll be from 11:00 to 12:00 when the club opens there won't be anyone there anyway and so I went I did it and he was right at 11 o'clock my kids were there but does it really anybody else there and but by 12 o'clock it was quite full and I was hooked and me my adrenaline I mean I had a rush you know from doing it and so I started doing it you know my friends knew but on Saturday nights you know I'd go to places you know in the East Village where they'd let me play you know they'd pay me I just like can I play for a couple hours and they'd let me play and I played and it was a hobby and I kept working on it and got better at it but I really you know except privately nobody knew shortly after I became president of the firm which happens to most DJ's I was I was playing and I was playing it up place in New York City and a reporter from the New York Times you know saw it and we're okay Kelly you probably googled it up there Katie wrote about it and you know so what was then out and I you know I was describing earlier we were talking earlier to a small group here my first reaction when I heard it was gonna be the paper I was horrified I was like what's everybody to think how is this going to affect you know affect me but then Lloyd Lloyd did something you know very very nice he tweeted you know the same day he tweeted out sometimes David really needs to let down his hair and by the way is very very hard for me and it was a way it was a way of him saying you know it's okay that he's doing this it's okay and you know that led me to really thinking about it and saying okay I really like this this is really fun I'm enjoying this I'm gonna keep doing it but I then said if I'm gonna keep doing it I got a really I got to get better and if you want to get better you've got to produce music so I started taking lessons around producing and and I started producing and and as it's just evolved it's become a thing I I had no expectation you know Jennifer was talking earlier I had no expectation that this was gonna be anything other than a hobby and it is just to be clear a hobby but now it's a hobby we're actually you know I have a platform where I'm getting paid and I'm giving her way to charity I'm doing something good with it and that's really terrific but there's been a whole bunch of stuff that's come out of it and this is really what gets to what you're talking about that I just never expected the first is it's changed the way I'm perceived at Goldman Sachs in a positive way and the simplest example that I can give is I was running Investment Banking for ten years at Goldman Sachs I've been on the management committee at Goldman Sachs for 15 years I walked around that building and Goldman Sachs a very young organization 60% of the people work at Goldman Sachs are 30 years old or less 74% of the people work of Goldman Sachs are millennial or Gen Z so 37 years old or younger I would walk around that building nobody would talk to me I'd be in the elevator and I would walk into the elevator with a bunch of young people I say hey how's it going and they'd be like fine no looking at their shoes I don't think I'm that scary and intimidating but I walk around that building now everybody stops me wants to talk to me I'm in the lobby getting coffee people want to talk to me and they they usually start and that they want to talk about music and then two minutes later we're talking about business so we're talking about the firm but it just it humanized me and I think a positive way and I think it humanizes the firm and by the way it's just not about me it's allowing other people at the firm to be their authentic selves to bring their authentic their authentic selves to work and I just think I think it's a better way for the organization to be but I you know this I stumbled it to this and I'm working as I as as I go but it's really changing my perception of what a modern leader needs to be and you know how we need to be if we want to lead people in a modern world and by the way people are different when I when I started I I was with a group of people yesterday I talked about this one I started if someone said jump I said how high okay I know that if I say jump today at Goldman Sachs and I'm talking to an employee and their 30s they do not say how they start by saying well let's discuss you know why you want me to do it why is why is jumping good for goldman sachs it why is he jumping good for me and i was jumping in to advance my career and you know personally I'm not a jumper I'm a skipper because he thing really makes me feel fulfilled relevant and so could we talk about whether for me to succeed at Goldman Sachs is it really necessary for me to jump or can I be successful as a skipper you know in your organization yes that's the way the world's really evolved and I understand that but I mean it's you know I looked people wore shoes with laces I wore shoes with laces I hated shoes with laces it always getting tied you always tying them you know but that's what other people you mirrored yourself after the people you work with today people are much more their own self they're they they're an individual people can express everybody used to wear suits all the suits look the same whether men are women they were suits everybody dressed exactly the same you walk around goldman sachs and everybody's dressing the way they want to dress the way they think is appropriate for their job their day their experience one of the things i got credit for in the last year and a half was changing the dress code it's it's it's really create that base by the way there was more press articles written when we announced that the dress code was officially changed then there were articles written about me becoming the CEO and the reason I did it is I was walking around looking at the firm and everybody in the firm was dressed casually except for a very small number of people and I asked for the dress code this was like the first month I was the CEO I say can I see the dress code because I knew one existed I got a 35 page document that had been put together you know years ago and I looked at it none of it fit what the firm was and so we wrote a one-page memo one page one paragraph memo two sentences that basically said dress in a way that's appropriate for your day for your clients for your work for your experience we all know what's appropriate we all know it's not appropriate in a workplace be appropriate and I just codified something that society had changed over a long period of time and the firm of naturally evolved too but fact that we hadn't said that if you were a young person coming from Stanford and starting your first day at Goldman Sachs you would be super worried about what you needed to wear and there was no reason for you to be worried about that because the world of the organization had progressed and so it was important to basically cuff I that and say you know this is the way we dress a cold in sex this is what matters and that got thousands of newspaper articles and it's really a little bit more visibility than we need well I appreciate the candor I really do I think as much as we joke about the different versions of you I think you have shared you know the DNA that that you bring to the office to DJing so I appreciate that and I think we have time very quickly for a couple questions that we have from the audience I'm chenyu MBA one so my question is that on Coleman is a global bank and obviously you guys are involved in many emerging markets and some of the emerging markets have governance problem on like for Gomes case is he Malaysia so I was wondering what's your take on you know Gomes emerging market strategy with you know like sufficient governance he Minds going forwards sure so so as many of you know you know we're involved in a in a situation and Malaysia that's been very reputationally damaging to the firm that we're trying to work through and we're trying to resolve we did a bunch of financing for the Malaysian government I back in 2012 2013 and after the financing was done the prime minister at the time Prime Minister Najib along with a gentleman named Joe Lowe stole a significant amount of the money that we had raised and other money that was in the their version of a sovereign wealth fund and to people who worked at Goldman Sachs you know after the fact got involved and the movement of that money the laundering of that money around the world and committed you know over criminal actions and so you know when you run an organization with forty thousand people unfortunately you know sometimes people do bad things but we own that and that's our responsibility I mean so there obviously consequences for the firm because of that I think your point one of the things that you have to step back and you have to recognize is that when you do business in these emerging economies a bunch of the things that we take for granted in places like the United States don't exist and I think our view on this has evolved a little bit over time you know I think 10 years ago we really thought you know our job was to make capital accessible anywhere in the world as long as it was it was done in a way where you were providing capital and access to capital that would obviously better economic participation you know the world has long forgotten and in 2009 2010 2011 President Obama was playing golf with Prime Minister Najib President Obama was visiting Malaysia President Obama was talking about how it was important that we did business with Malaysia and supported Malaysia that's all now you know history in these emerging markets you know the standards around rule of law corruption you know we're different and so our bar in doing business in these places has to be higher and they think our experience in Malaysia's raise the bar that doesn't mean that we won't do business with governments in these emerging economies but the bar to do business and the filter to do it is going to be is going to be higher it has to be now because the reputational damage when something goes wrong is is its it's not worth and so so I think it's I think it's changed our lens now we still do business in all these places but I think we we limit it to some degree and I think the the last decade okay time for one more question hey David my name is Mark Bush I'm a first year student here at the GSB you're known for spreading a lot of initiatives targeted at improving it you have a banking experience at yes you talk a little bit about what's in the action area Jenna to keep attracting top talent so so I talked a little bit about this I you know the secret sauce of Goldman Sachs is is is the people and I you know one things I'm incredibly proud of and I see it every day I see it every day through the experience I get working with people Goldman Sachs and I see it every day as I travel around and meet with our clients you know all over the world to talk about the quality of our people we have extraordinary people in our organization it is an extraordinary organization from a talent perspective and we have to keep that that is a lot more complicated in 2020 than it was you know twenty or thirty years ago and so it requires you know one creating an environment that people want to work in and want to be a part of it requires enormous investment you know in people and training and development you know of people it requires having an organization where people can move around and have different experiences so there's strong incentives when you want to have other experiences in your career to stay in the organization rather to look outside the organization I and you know it requires you know having an organization where the rewards with the psychic rewards but also the economic rewards and the wealth creation rewards you know we're super competitive and so we focus on all that you know all the time there isn't a specific thing that that I could say to you this is the next thing we're gonna do that adds to this but you know what you talked about in terms of junior bankers it's it gives you a sense of my mindset and and you know how I think about things when things have to evolve sometimes you have to take a risk to change them you have to do something that the initial response to the initial reaction is gonna be well that's crazy we can't do that and that what you're talking about with junior bankers is a great example of that just a you know tell the group when I got out of school and and I started to work you know as a young person in the business work was defined by the fact that you worked very very hard but the minute you walked out of the office until you walked back into the office you really were free and unreachable yes somebody could call you on your home phone but you didn't have to answer it you could let the answering machine pick up even if you were home you could screen your calls on the answering machine there's some of the audience that remember answering machines and so you might have worked very very hard but if you walked out the out of the office you know at 10 o'clock at night you know you knew until you walk back in the next day and maybe you didn't walk back in the next day until nine or ten o'clock in the morning you're unreachable and the world moved at a different pace life changed and everybody expects 24/7 you know response time and if you're coming out of school and you're a young person and you're going to work and you're working in environment where everybody's texting and e-mailing and everybody expects you to be connected you have no experience you have no guardrails you know of no parameters for how you're supposed to manage that it takes an exceptionally confident young person to realize that you actually aren't expected to work all the time you're expected to have boundaries and so we came up with the idea of creating boundaries and we said what's a reasonable amount of time that someone should work when you're young and you're starting out in the business and we came up with you know 70 hours you know it was a pretty full week and I know that sounds I know that sounds like it sounds like a lot but if you if you think about that you're young you come in you work from 9:00 to 9:00 that's 12 hours and you know you probably put in you know five hours you know five hours a day on the weekend or ten hours you know one day on the weekend does it all have to be in the office but in the competitive world that actually is you know the way people people work and we thought about that we said okay that feels like a lot is that sustainable and we said you know what that's probably not as sustainable as we'd like it to be let's target 65 and we thought about that we said we think we can make that work in some way shape or form but we're gonna track it and so we started tracking how much every young person was working we could track it because we knew when they walked in the building we knew when they left the building and we started tracking it we started keeping track of this and this was this was done an investment banking you know where the hours of the hardest well what we found out is despite what everybody said okay the average person was actually working less than 65 house okay the average person was working about 59 or 60 hours over the course of a week there were definitely outliers definitely outliers but the curve if you want to look at the bell curve it was very wide okay in terms of very few people working less than 55 or 60 hours but there were very few people working more than 65 or 70 hours and so we basically said let's try to moderate this let's create a rule that work is done Sunday morning from 9 o'clock in the morning till Friday night at 9 o'clock and we'll give you some guidelines as to how much we think you should work but we're gonna close the office from 9 o'clock on Friday to 9 o'clock on Sunday except by exception because of course there gonna be some things that will create exception and you've got to get exception from a partner of the firm to be asked to work during that period of time and people said we were crazy and I said well let's try it for six months so let's see what happens and we tried it you know what it generally worked we basically got to the point that between every weekend there were kind of 5 to 7-percent exceptions but generally speaking people knew they could plan and we started tracking and we found that people were working 60 to 65 hours a week and we got to a place where people felt a lot better about it but it was it was a bold thing to try because it was kind of upsetting the applecart and and it's it's a great example of when something's not working right or the societal change has changed the way things work try something different and recognize you might fail it might not work but you'll learn something then you try something again and so when we think about you know talent in the organization we think a lot about you know how to how to find ways to make the place you know really really exceptional and we'll continue to think about that so to wrap up we have a tradition called the lightning round where we ask a series of quick questions usually they warrant maybe a one-word answer I thought it'd be fun to maybe twist the game a little bit to play towards your music interests all right okay perfect so I was going to name or I will name a situation where you would probably turn music on force so something like going to the gym and I want to kind of go inside your soundtrack of what is the first song that comes to mind as I name a situation is that so good sure I don't know if I'll be able to play exactly by your rules but I'll try I just made up the rules you can change him if you want so okay so heading into the shower right when you wake up you're getting ready for work in the morning what comes on any commercial music in there okay music fact CNBC's even played some of my music so so you're going in you're in the workplace you're about to have a well know you've made it to work did you listen any music on the way to work is there a Sun comes up no okay no I mean if I'm on the way to work I'm on the way to work I'm generally you know I get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and I work out I turn on CNBC I work out and usually I you know I'm heading you know out the door you know with 7:15 7:30 in the morning but I really haven't you know outside of when I wake up at 6 o'clock looking at my phone and making sure I don't have a text message for my kids overnight that's something terrible is going on you know I I don't look at my phone and so I'm done working out and I'm on my way to the office in general when I get into the car I'd like to put some music on but instead I'm kind of looking at my phone and making sure that before I get into my first meeting at 8 o'clock anything that has to be dealt with music in the car in the car ok all right now we're at the office any music you play as you're gonna go into what you think will be a difficult conversation in my head in your head what's the pump of music well I mean if you know if I'm playing one of my tracks it could be feel alive but um but I you know look there's there I'm not supposed to say look musics running through my head all day but it's it's not it's not it's not like this song associated with this this with that if you're actually if you looked at my phone I have 350 playlists on my phone and and they're probably about 15,000 tracks of music if you if you look at the playlist the playlists are all bunched by an experienced by a place by a time by a thing and so you know there's style you know if you if you if you really want to get excited you know I've got a bunch of kind of heavy EDM bangers going through my head you know you know Tiesto grapevine you know just when I said that Tiesto grapevine ran through my head and so you know it's but it's not it's not like I associate one song with the experience it's like what are you what are you in the mood for you know do you want a bang if you want to groove you want to relax you want to go deeper yeah I mean it's you know what's you know what's what's what's the moment but I do one of the things I do do and I know I'm Way off your ground it's off the game has no rules what I do do is I'm constantly sent music now you know every single day and so when I get a five-minute break in the office where I'm kind of like okay what do I do next if you walk by my office sometimes you'll find them listening to tracks that are being sent to me that are new music that's not released and so you know I'm constantly during the day you know during any given day I probably listen to five to ten new tracks of music that aren't released that I've never heard that somebody's trying to get somebody to pick up and produce so that brings me to the last question we're gonna play a song on the way out of here and it's just a few minutes that you're releasing on Friday yes new track how would you describe it in one word it's a it's a commercial one word okay fine one senses listen it's a it's a it's a commercial house dance track its commercial house dance track it's something it's it's a genre that you'd hear on 51 on BPM on Sirius awesome awesome David Solomon DJ D salt thank you so much for just [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Stanford Graduate School of Business

Views: 162,631

Rating: 4.8192091 out of 5

Keywords: stanford, stanford gsb, stanford graduate school of business, mba

Id: Wr0NT4KelVY

Length: 64min 12sec (3852 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2020