Buying the Goldman Double-Dip

John Waldron Goldman Sachs
The Goldman board wants to keep Solomon and Waldron around—Waldron had a recent, brief dalliance with Apollo—to solidify the bank’s leadership for the next half-decade or so. Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
February 12, 2025

Suddenly, it seems, so-called “double bonuses” for C-suite executives on Wall Street are all the rage, and Mike Mayo, the outspoken Wall Street research analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, has had enough. Indeed, with proxy and annual meeting season fast approaching, Mayo is calling out the boards of Goldman Sachs, as well as a trio of large commercial banks—KeyCorp, Truist Financial, and U.S. Bancorp—for gifting their top executives generous retention-style bonuses that basically don’t require them to hit any meaningful performance metrics along the way. He hopes investors will share his concerns, and make a stink about the bonuses, too.