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Goldman Sachs

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Goldman Sachs

The Culture of Success

Knopf,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

The tale of Wall Street’s last powerful private partnership stretches from humble beginnings to IPO, and finally — Gasp! — corporate casual.

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Well Structured
  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Author Lisa Endlich begins her saga about Goldman Sachs, one of the world's premier investment banks, with its unexpectedly modest roots. The founder began with just a horse-drawn wagon of trade goods. Then, she leads readers through an enlightening history of the firm, enhanced by her sharp eye for detail. For instance, she describes partner Bob Rubin's shabby briefcase to illustrate the firm's predilection for understatement. Yet Endlich, a former Goldman Sachs trader, isn't the clear-eyed observer that a purely uninvolved journalist might be. She doesn't shy away from the difficult parts of Goldman Sachs' history, but she does sacrifice a bit of credibility by expecting readers to swallow the firm's "client-always-comes-first" party line. And whoever heard of an ego-less banker? At Goldman? Come on. Despite Endlich's fondness for the firm, getAbstract strongly recommends this book for its penetrating glimpse into the largely sequestered world of Wall Street investment banking. (NoteThis book's narrative ends just prior to Goldman's 1999 initial public offering.)

Summary

The Goldman Culture

Wall Street's Goldman Sachs has become one of the premier investment banks in the world, a position it achieved by focusing on its core values:

  • Place the client first - Make the client the focus of any deal; salesmen, bankers and traders exist to serve clients. Employees are told to think of clients as temporarily placed in their custody. A predecessor built the relationship, and someone else from the company will inherit it.
  • Contain your ego - Success breeds hubris, which leads to poor decisions. Limiting ego might sometimes mean turning down money, but it is the best course in the long run.
  • Control greed - Restrain greed by focusing on the far horizon, not the annual bonus. Goldman Sachs encouraged greed, but only long-term greed.
  • Turn down hostile takeovers - Uniquely, Goldman Sachs would not take hostile corporate raiders as clients. The theory was that raiding a company today might create an enemy in the future. Indeed, the victims of corporate raids often sought help from Goldman Sachs.
  • Focus on teamwork - While Goldman Sachs has been criticized for encouraging conformity and stifling creativity, its culture...

About the Author

Lisa Endlich was a vice president and foreign exchange trader at Goldman Sachs. She earned her master's degrees in management and in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She lives in England with her husband and three children.

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