As president and COO of Goldman Sachs, Gary D. Cohn should be the obvious candidate to succeed Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein. According to the folks at BusinessWeek that isn’t a sure bet, say a dozen current and former colleagues who did not want to be identified. While Cohn has helped the firm earn billions in profits, his handicap, they say, may be the qualities that got him to the No. 2 spot: an abrasive style, an appetite for risk, and a long association with Blankfein.
Cohn, 50, has worked with Blankfein since their days at Goldman Sachs’s commodities trading division, J. Aron. Their trading background gives them an approach to the business that differs from that of some former leaders, says Michael C. Aronstein, president of Marketfield Asset Management. John C. Whitehead and Henry Paulson were investment bankers whose focus was on persuading executives to hire Goldman Sachs as an investment banker on takeovers or financings. “The people who ran Goldman back in my early days had a banking background,” Aronstein says. “They built that business on the basis that if you hired them, you would be part of the team that won. The commodity business is completely different. You have to guess whether you’re somebody’s customer or their prey….”
There's more. Find it at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/why-gary-cohn-may-not-be-goldmans-next-ceo-07282011.html
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