00:00When I saw this and I started reading it, Todd, I was like, how would Goldman Sachs ever
00:05approve, the media department, ever approve of this photo shoot and of this interview?
00:10And then I find out today, thanks to you and Sri, this was not sanctioned.
00:14Yeah, it certainly wasn't sanctioned, Tim. And one of the funniest things, actually,
00:18I think about this whole ordeal is that just this week, Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of
00:23Goldman Sachs, released a memoir in which he fondly recalled this moment in 1986 when a young
00:2931-year-old Jim Cramer, who, you know, viewers of CNBC will know well, you know, gave a quote to
00:36the New York Times saying that there was nothing in a store that he couldn't buy. And he was gone
00:40from the... And where did he go after that? Well, he went and hedge fund first and then...
00:44But he left Goldman Sachs. The point is, he was gone from the firm, as Blankfein points out of the
00:48book,
00:48he was gone from the... Shortly thereafter. Shortly thereafter, he was gone from the firm.
00:51For now, as far as we understand it, these young men are still at Goldman Sachs. There's another
00:57at Barclays as well, and another at PwC, which has also made some finger pointing on social media.
01:03Wait, that's finance?
01:04Right, exactly. The guy does, he does do data for finance and AI, as I understand it. And he's
01:10actually the only one, to be fair to him, who's gone on the record and reflected on this whole
01:14incident. Obviously, partly, perhaps due to a different comms policy.
01:19Well, that's it. What are the... I mean, what?
01:21Is this career ending for... Or job ending for these guys?
01:24Because, I mean, look, you know, in there, you know, in, you know, people who are defending
01:30them are saying, you know, let kids be kids, right? We're talking about 24, 25-year-old
01:34boys, right?
01:35Oh, my God.
01:35But they also do, obviously, have...
01:37Actions have consequences, kids.
01:39Sure, sure, exactly. Actions have consequences. And the worst thing is, I don't think it was
01:42necessarily the photos themselves. It was more about the interview that they win, which
01:46they said some things that you might argue are quite unselfaware.
01:50Yeah. I haven't read all the interview, but it should be also the photos.
01:54Why?
01:54I don't know.
01:55I mean, one of the... There was a shirt, I think a Tom Ford shirt that one of the Goldman,
02:00the Goldman trader was wearing with a massive cuff that was, like, way beyond his hands
02:05and, you know, some quite questionable suit choices.
02:07But when... But don't they get styled by the photographers and stuff?
02:10Yeah. So they were styled by the photographers for this interview.
02:12And that might not be their watches and stuff, right?
02:14No, no, no, no, no. Exactly. And they, you know, it was a kind of let's play dress up
02:18situation.
02:19Yeah.
02:19Here's, you know, here's the new generation on Wall Street, yada, yada, yada.
02:23But obviously, in the moment that we're in, the affordability crisis, you know, complaints
02:27about, you know, obviously understandable complaints about wealth inequality in the US,
02:31you know, very political moment that we're in when it comes to the US's, you know, economic
02:36and financial situation. It's understandable that the firm's a little bit skeptical about it.
02:42Talk about the interviews and what some of the things that these folks said.
02:45Yeah, I mean, one of them, I mean, this young guy, Mason Clark, who's an investment banking
02:49analyst at Goldman Sachs, you know, he advised readers to, quote, live below your means while
02:54he was lying on a tufted blue couch and wearing a suit from Celine, a Hermes tie, and an Omega
02:59watch. Clay Nelson, who's a trader at Goldman Sachs, an equity trader in New York, he told the
03:06magazine that he once spent $3,000 on a Montclair jacket that he definitely didn't need.
03:10That's Clay, sorry, that's Mason Clark just there.
03:14Sorry, for folks on radio, you definitely have to pull this up, but there was the blue
03:18tufted couch.
03:20It's still on the front page. If you scroll down a little bit on Bloomberg.com, I believe
03:23it's still on our front page today. But Nelson told the magazine that he once spent $3,000
03:28on a Montclair jacket that he, quote, definitely didn't need. And while he was wearing a pinstripe
03:33Tom Ford suit and glasses from a luxury German eyewear brand. So, and then also proceeds to say
03:39that, you know, when he leaves the house every day and he, you know, taps, it's like having,
03:43he has to tap his, his card to leave the house because New York's so expensive at the same
03:47time. So, you know, it's not the most self-aware interview that young financial professionals
03:52could give.
03:53Do you, um, you, you cover these, these financial institutions, you cover these banks, and this
03:58is not the typical story that you would do, but you understand the, the cultures that these
04:02have that in the inside, the cultures they want to portray, you mentioned Lloyd Blankfein's book.
04:09You don't want to be on the radar of, you don't want a high profile if you're 24 years old,
04:1425 years
04:14old inside one of these banks, because that means that you've probably done something that has maybe
04:19rubbed people the wrong way.
04:21Yeah. I mean, that's, that's for sure. I mean, a lot of people succeed by keeping their head down by
04:26famously being, you know, neutral, politically savvy people within an office environment,
04:31you know, internally and externally to clients who want to be a shapeshifter on Wall Street.
04:36You want to be able to be someone that isn't pinned or doesn't have a, you know, any kind of
04:41negative reputation. That's partly how people get ahead, right? Cynically or not. That's partly how
04:46people climb the greasy pole in this industry. Um, you know, on the flip side, actually, this,
04:51this incident actually did remind me of a slightly more, you know, perhaps principled
04:55example from last year that I also reported with my colleague Sridhar, which is a trader at,
05:00at Citigroup who posted on LinkedIn about, uh, uh, you know, about the famine in Gaza and said,
05:08and called it a genocide and quickly his, his, um, LinkedIn post was disappeared and he was told,
05:14uh, you know, he, he, we understand that he was, um, told to remove it. And that in itself,
05:20that story caused, um, you know, I mean, that story was extremely widely read as well. And,
05:25and it caused a big debate as well about how much, uh, you know, how constrictive firms should be
05:30with allowing their employees to express themselves externally. Obviously in this case,
05:35it's a much more sort of juvenile and, you know, I guess non-political way, but it shows that this
05:43obviously shows the firm in a, in a questionable light in the present moment in terms of culture on
05:49Wall Street. The other example that we saw last year was obviously a very highly politicized moment
05:54where someone was trying to take a very principled stand and was basically, you know, told by his
05:59firm to, to shut it down as well. So it's a, you know, while these two examples of very different
06:03types of things that people are expressing themselves in, it also comes back to Wall Street's
06:09fundamentally quite conservative nature and the need for these firms to maintain their independence
06:13or a semblance of independence among their clients, right?
06:17No, it's interesting. It almost feels more bonfire. It's like the era, you know, where I feel like,
06:24I feel like we went through a point where it was, yeah, you know, there was an era I feel
06:27like on
06:27Wall Street, right? Like showing the wealth. And I mean, I just think about how many times we used to
06:32do stories and it was like a laundry list of the bonuses people were getting. And so it's really
06:38changed dramatically. There is a saying though, just to wrap up, just got 30 seconds, Todd,
06:42there's no bad press. Well, I think if you talk to Goldman Sachs's comms team, they might disagree
06:47with that. But there was some actually quite interesting takes on LinkedIn today. And there
06:50was a PR person who shared my piece and said, said that actually in some ways, PWC won the day
06:56because that was the only kid who actually could speak candidly about this. He said actually on the
07:01record with us this morning, if us being normal causes outrage, then we're cooked, right? In Gen Z
07:06terminology. And in fact, they were the only comms team that didn't reply. So they weren't that fast.
07:12Yeah.
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