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Of Mice and Goldman

How the most prestigious bank on Wall Street became smaller than JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Citi. And the M&A deals that could put it back on top.

Lloyd Blankfein, David Solomon and Stephen Scherr
Photo by Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty
William D. Cohan
February 2, 2022

Back in May 1999, Goldman Sachs went public to great fanfare after years of internal debate among its partners about the wisdom of such a step. The top brass had been utterly devoted to the idea of remaining a private partnership, but they quickly got with the program, especially after the top top partners figured they were suddenly going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars each after the I.P.O. That point was further driven home after the first day of trading, when the Goldman stock increased by some 30 percent.