From the New Yorker: In a recent post, Lauren Collins wrote about former Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith, who very publicly resigned from the financial firm last week. In his Times op-ed, Smith described his disillusion with Goldman after twelve years, saying that the culture had become toxic and damaging to the firm and its clients:
It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients… It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization.
Smith’s essay, Collins noted, raised a few questions, such as whether Goldman had ever truly experienced such altruistic years. A search through The New Yorker’s archives may have provided an answer. In December of 2000, Nick Paumgarten wrote a Talk of the Town story about Goldman breaking a rather unusual international record: the world’s largest hug. The company hug was initiated by Maynard Holt, a Goldman vice-president in the energy and power group, who e-mailed Guinness World Records, Ltd., expressing an interest in breaking the record at the firm’s annual investment-banking conference, which typically draws about three thousand Goldman employees from around the globe. Holt credited Goldman’s “humor team” with conceiving the original idea and later obtaining approval from the senior partners. The goal, Holt said, was to bring Goldman representatives together “in a way that says we’re still a small family….
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2012/03/goldman-sachs-company-hug.html
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