Mayor Bloomberg made an unannounced visit to Goldman Sachs’ downtown Manhattan headquarters yesterday to deliver a pep talk to employees after a former executive ripped apart the storied investment bank in a scathing public resignation that went viral.
“The mayor stopped by to make clear that the company is a vital part of the city’s economy, and the kind of over-the-top and unfair attacks on one of the city’s biggest employers in the city’s biggest industry that we’re seeing can eventually hurt all New Yorkers,” said mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser.
Bloomberg spent about an hour in the Goldman tower across from the World Trade Center site, going from desk to desk to chat with traders and division heads.
Afterwards, the mayor and Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein headed downstairs to the local Shake Shack to grab a couple of burgers, surrounded by students from nearby Stuyvesant HS.
Loeser said the idea for the personal show of support was entirely the mayor’s own.
“He likes to defend people who are under [unfair] fire,” said Loeser. “He wanted to tell them, `You’re valued. You and your company are an important part of this city.”
The mayor’s defense of the company is consistent with his repeated statements that New York needs to maintain a thriving financial industry, which provides a disproportionate share of the city’s tax revenues.
Goldman was rattled to its 143-year foundation Wednesday when Greg Smith, a London-based executive director, announced in a New York Times op-ed piece that he was quitting after 12 years because the culture of the company had turned toxic and that profits were being placed ahead of the interests of clients.
Wall Street insiders said Smith’s screed cast a pall not just on his former bank but across the entire financial sector, which is still trying to shake its “fat cat” label.
“I think we are beginning to enter a new political round of attacking the banks,” said Dick Bove, a financial analyst at Rochdale Securities. “There’s a desire to continue to treat banks — and Goldman is the lead name — as a political foil.”
At Goldman, banker sources groused that Smith’s letter forced them to spend valuable time on Wednesday and yesterday defending themselves.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned employees against taking advantage of Goldman’s situation.
“I want to be clear that I don’t want anyone here to seek advantage from a competitor’s alleged issues or hearsay — ever,” Dimon said in an e-mail. “It’s not the way we do business.”
Other executives took a different tack, aiming to differentiate themselves from the much-maligned Wall Street franchise.
“I think that it is important that you are aware of this article and understand the differences between what it says about Goldman and what and who we are here at Oppenheimer,” wrote Oppenheimer & Co. CEO Albert Lowenthal on Wednesday morning.
“We do not trade against [our clients] and have not built a firm around a proprietary trading book that requires our clients to lose in order for us to win,” the Oppenheimer chief’s letter continued.