April 28th 09, 06:18 PM
(( Note comments on Bill Gates. Gates is a big purveyor of "Aid to
Africa" which does nothing to alleviate their single biggest problem,
and he has to understand, better than most people, exactly what that
problem is. It isn't AIDS or starvation or filth. It's that on
average, sub-Saharan Africans sport IQs in the room temperature range-
unfortunately, not the African summer room temperature but that of,
say, most Europeans in the spring or fall. (That is of course if they
used the Fahrenheit scale, which is another issue.) Either
recolonize Africa with first world leadership, which is better for
everyone-most blacks in Rhodesia did immeasurably better than now in
Zim, you will surely see-or isolate them completely and let disease
and lions reduce populations to pre-colonial levels and let them work
it out for, oh, another thousand millennia or so. Bret.))
The Goldman rules for mastering the universe
>> "As banks report big profits, whatever happened to the end of business as usual? I went inside the mightiest financial institutionMatthew Syed
Behind a set of glass doors in what used to be the Daily Express
building in Fleet Street, and along the way in the former Daily
Telegraph building, are the main European offices of the most feared,
revered and secretive investment bank on the planet. It has been
described as a 21st-century cult and as the Rolls-Royce of financial
institutions. It is the place where every sharp-dressed, hard-edged
graduate longs to work, not least because the best and brightest are
promoted so fast that their noses bleed. It is called Goldman Sachs.
I worked in the City for a while in the late 1990s, albeit across town
in Canary Wharf, for Morgan Stanley in a department called mergers and
acquisitions. I didn't last long. I think it was in the seventh week
that I realised neither mergers nor acquisitions were quite my bag,
when a colleague asked if I could stay in the office overnight to
receive a fax and crunch some numbers. “What if I say no,” I quipped.
He smiled thinly before shepherding me towards the fax machine. I
jumped ship the next day.
But the most striking thing about Morgan Stanley, beyond the crippling
hours, was how everything was defined in relation to Goldman Sachs. On
the very first day of my employment, at a time when finance was
booming, John Studzinski, one of the top men at Morgan Stanley, sent
out an e-mail to staff expressing delight at how well everything
seemed to be going. His words did not focus on the numbers or those
who had helped to generate them. Instead, he enthused: “We are
getting more business than Goldman Sachs!”
Virtually every conversation in the canteen or in the downstairs
restaurant returned to the same theme: how can we steal a march on
Goldman? How do we shaft Goldman? What would they do at Goldman if
they were in this or that situation? All roads, all conversations led
back to Fleet Street. It was not so much that Goldman Sachs dominated
the City than that it defined the City, setting the benchmark, the
standards and the agenda.
This week it did it again. On Monday Goldman announced its first
quarter results and, despite finding itself in the midst of the most
severe banking crisis since the early Cretaceous, managed to report
pre-tax profits of $2.6billion. The City was pretty astonished by this
performance and financial stocks rallied on the news.
The figures were announced a day earlier than expected and accompanied
by a pledge to repay swiftly the $10billion US government loan the
bank had to take as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Programme. The
manner of the announcement completely overshadowed similarly positive
figures from J.P. Morgan yesterday.
The masters of the universe were back. How did Goldman do it? Well, in
part it has been helped by the collapse of so many of its rivals -
including Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns - meaning that it has far
less competition. But the deeper question is why does Goldman Sachs
seem to be so far ahead of the game so often? What do its staff get up
to behind those shiny glass doors that enables them to keep their
rivals at bay year after year?
The reality of life at Goldman is a bit different to what you might
think. I often go into the offices to see my friend and tennis
partner, Michael Sherwood, who is one of their head honchos. His
office is perched at the edge of the trading area on the first floor,
a place that is a bit like an electronic library with row upon row of
flickering screens being stared at by intense traders.
Like most bankers, Goldman employees are unnaturally hard working, but
the most conspicuous feature of the company is its obsession with
excellence. It prides itself on hiring only the best and brightest;
anyone applying to work there has to go through a recruitment process
comprising ten to fifteen interviews. It is often joked that it is
easier to get into a nun's knickers than into Goldman Sachs. It takes
only a single interviewer to say no and the applicant is rejected.
Given its commitment to hiring the cream of the world's talent, it is
perhaps unsurprising that Bill Gates once described Goldman Sachs as
Microsoft's biggest competitor. “It's all about IQ,” said Gates. “You
win with IQ. Our only competition for IQ is the top investment banks.”
Once through the door at Goldman, the most able (ie, the one's who
make the most money) are promoted at stomach-churning speed - far
quicker than at many other banks - and the less able are kicked out.
What this means is that many of the top executives have spent a large
part if not all of their careers at the company. Sherwood, who is co-
chief executive for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has been there
for 24 years, ever since leaving the University of Manchester.
The offices are plush, but not gilded. There is a gym in the basement,
a Starbucks on the second floor (it closes at 4pm - not exactly a help
to those burning the midnight oil) and an upper-ground floor canteen
serving passable Italian, Asian and English cuisine from behind
counters. Conversation tends to be low key and courteous, rather than
raucous and ostentatious (the latter is frowned upon at Goldman).
Surrounding all is the constant drone of intellectual application and
hard work. Such is the level of commitment that it is damn near
impossible to find anyone prepared to engage in small talk, not even
the gorgeous girls at the front desk who dismiss my (widely acclaimed)
banter with consummate disdain.
What it also means is that the wages at Goldman can be vast. There was
a furious response when it was revealed that the company was
increasing its pool for compensation and bonuses by about 25 per cent.
How could they do this after a getting a $10billion bailout from US
taxpayers? Goldman would reply that staff are likely to be paid more
this year than last year because the company has performed better.
It would also point out that the company did not really need the money
from the US Treasury in the first place, but was required to take it
under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme. (By making participation
obligatory, the authorities hoped to avoid stigmatising the more
troubled banks). Goldman has also indicated that it would like to
repay the money, with interest, as soon as the Treasury will allow it
to, thus freeing the company from public scrutiny and control.
There is no doubt that banks and bankers are public enemy No 1 at the
moment, and there seems to be little distinction between the banks
that were reckless and those that were not. But one thing does seem
clear as the financial system begins to emerge from the rubble of the
credit crunch: Goldman Sachs is as well placed to dominate the next 50
years of high finance as it was the last. " <<
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6108484.ece
Africa" which does nothing to alleviate their single biggest problem,
and he has to understand, better than most people, exactly what that
problem is. It isn't AIDS or starvation or filth. It's that on
average, sub-Saharan Africans sport IQs in the room temperature range-
unfortunately, not the African summer room temperature but that of,
say, most Europeans in the spring or fall. (That is of course if they
used the Fahrenheit scale, which is another issue.) Either
recolonize Africa with first world leadership, which is better for
everyone-most blacks in Rhodesia did immeasurably better than now in
Zim, you will surely see-or isolate them completely and let disease
and lions reduce populations to pre-colonial levels and let them work
it out for, oh, another thousand millennia or so. Bret.))
The Goldman rules for mastering the universe
>> "As banks report big profits, whatever happened to the end of business as usual? I went inside the mightiest financial institutionMatthew Syed
Behind a set of glass doors in what used to be the Daily Express
building in Fleet Street, and along the way in the former Daily
Telegraph building, are the main European offices of the most feared,
revered and secretive investment bank on the planet. It has been
described as a 21st-century cult and as the Rolls-Royce of financial
institutions. It is the place where every sharp-dressed, hard-edged
graduate longs to work, not least because the best and brightest are
promoted so fast that their noses bleed. It is called Goldman Sachs.
I worked in the City for a while in the late 1990s, albeit across town
in Canary Wharf, for Morgan Stanley in a department called mergers and
acquisitions. I didn't last long. I think it was in the seventh week
that I realised neither mergers nor acquisitions were quite my bag,
when a colleague asked if I could stay in the office overnight to
receive a fax and crunch some numbers. “What if I say no,” I quipped.
He smiled thinly before shepherding me towards the fax machine. I
jumped ship the next day.
But the most striking thing about Morgan Stanley, beyond the crippling
hours, was how everything was defined in relation to Goldman Sachs. On
the very first day of my employment, at a time when finance was
booming, John Studzinski, one of the top men at Morgan Stanley, sent
out an e-mail to staff expressing delight at how well everything
seemed to be going. His words did not focus on the numbers or those
who had helped to generate them. Instead, he enthused: “We are
getting more business than Goldman Sachs!”
Virtually every conversation in the canteen or in the downstairs
restaurant returned to the same theme: how can we steal a march on
Goldman? How do we shaft Goldman? What would they do at Goldman if
they were in this or that situation? All roads, all conversations led
back to Fleet Street. It was not so much that Goldman Sachs dominated
the City than that it defined the City, setting the benchmark, the
standards and the agenda.
This week it did it again. On Monday Goldman announced its first
quarter results and, despite finding itself in the midst of the most
severe banking crisis since the early Cretaceous, managed to report
pre-tax profits of $2.6billion. The City was pretty astonished by this
performance and financial stocks rallied on the news.
The figures were announced a day earlier than expected and accompanied
by a pledge to repay swiftly the $10billion US government loan the
bank had to take as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Programme. The
manner of the announcement completely overshadowed similarly positive
figures from J.P. Morgan yesterday.
The masters of the universe were back. How did Goldman do it? Well, in
part it has been helped by the collapse of so many of its rivals -
including Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns - meaning that it has far
less competition. But the deeper question is why does Goldman Sachs
seem to be so far ahead of the game so often? What do its staff get up
to behind those shiny glass doors that enables them to keep their
rivals at bay year after year?
The reality of life at Goldman is a bit different to what you might
think. I often go into the offices to see my friend and tennis
partner, Michael Sherwood, who is one of their head honchos. His
office is perched at the edge of the trading area on the first floor,
a place that is a bit like an electronic library with row upon row of
flickering screens being stared at by intense traders.
Like most bankers, Goldman employees are unnaturally hard working, but
the most conspicuous feature of the company is its obsession with
excellence. It prides itself on hiring only the best and brightest;
anyone applying to work there has to go through a recruitment process
comprising ten to fifteen interviews. It is often joked that it is
easier to get into a nun's knickers than into Goldman Sachs. It takes
only a single interviewer to say no and the applicant is rejected.
Given its commitment to hiring the cream of the world's talent, it is
perhaps unsurprising that Bill Gates once described Goldman Sachs as
Microsoft's biggest competitor. “It's all about IQ,” said Gates. “You
win with IQ. Our only competition for IQ is the top investment banks.”
Once through the door at Goldman, the most able (ie, the one's who
make the most money) are promoted at stomach-churning speed - far
quicker than at many other banks - and the less able are kicked out.
What this means is that many of the top executives have spent a large
part if not all of their careers at the company. Sherwood, who is co-
chief executive for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has been there
for 24 years, ever since leaving the University of Manchester.
The offices are plush, but not gilded. There is a gym in the basement,
a Starbucks on the second floor (it closes at 4pm - not exactly a help
to those burning the midnight oil) and an upper-ground floor canteen
serving passable Italian, Asian and English cuisine from behind
counters. Conversation tends to be low key and courteous, rather than
raucous and ostentatious (the latter is frowned upon at Goldman).
Surrounding all is the constant drone of intellectual application and
hard work. Such is the level of commitment that it is damn near
impossible to find anyone prepared to engage in small talk, not even
the gorgeous girls at the front desk who dismiss my (widely acclaimed)
banter with consummate disdain.
What it also means is that the wages at Goldman can be vast. There was
a furious response when it was revealed that the company was
increasing its pool for compensation and bonuses by about 25 per cent.
How could they do this after a getting a $10billion bailout from US
taxpayers? Goldman would reply that staff are likely to be paid more
this year than last year because the company has performed better.
It would also point out that the company did not really need the money
from the US Treasury in the first place, but was required to take it
under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme. (By making participation
obligatory, the authorities hoped to avoid stigmatising the more
troubled banks). Goldman has also indicated that it would like to
repay the money, with interest, as soon as the Treasury will allow it
to, thus freeing the company from public scrutiny and control.
There is no doubt that banks and bankers are public enemy No 1 at the
moment, and there seems to be little distinction between the banks
that were reckless and those that were not. But one thing does seem
clear as the financial system begins to emerge from the rubble of the
credit crunch: Goldman Sachs is as well placed to dominate the next 50
years of high finance as it was the last. " <<
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6108484.ece