The ex-Goldman Sachs heavy-hitter said “six per cent”. We were at a black-tie business dinner in Kensington. On a typical IPO, he said, the “lead left” adviser — which refers to the spot on the flotation paperwork where the bank’s name appears — would be looking at that sort of percentage fee. That would mean on Elon Musk’s SpaceX stock market listing — the biggest in history at $75 billion (valuing his company at more than $1.5 trillion) and set for this month — the investment bankers would be raking in $4.5 billion.
He saw me gulp. “But they will have done a deal, it will be a lot less than that, probably two per cent.” So $1.5 billion. He smiled. “It’s still a lot of money.” Goldman must share that sum with 22 other banks hired by Musk to find investors to buy shares in Space X. Even so, the major tranche will go to Goldman.
On the 33rd floor of the bank’s Lower Manhattan headquarters, where its leaders reside, there was said to have been a quiet celebration.
That seems odd, given the bank had long been working to land the plum assignment and, in doing so, saw off its great Wall Street rival Morgan Stanley (it gets the secondary job of helping to stabilise the shares once they go public — a lesser task but still hugely lucrative).
Goldman, though, is an organisation where conspicuous consumption is frowned upon, where executives have been instructed to avoid holding showy parties or being seen behaving extravagantly in public. They do not to discuss their earnings with each other; the size of individual bonus awards is known only to a few. It suggests that Goldman does empathy well. Like many banks, it is conscious of how it is portrayed, of wishing to be seen as in touch with ordinary people and with social issues. Goldman and its peers take pride in their concern, insisting their EQ is as high as their IQ.
Occasionally, though, the mask slips, as it did with Bill Winters last month. The chief executive of Standard Chartered referred to some of the thousands of his staff who are set to lose their jobs to artificial intelligence as “lower-value human capital”. The bank, which has its headquarters in London, was setting out plans to cut 7,800 back-office positions, mostly in response to AI.
“It’s not cost-cutting,” Winters said. “It’s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in.”
After receiving public criticism, Winters, who is paid £12.7 million a year, up from £12.5million in 2025, tried to explain what he meant, posting: “I said that lower-value roles are more vulnerable to automation, and that we have a responsibility to help colleagues move into higher-value roles.” He went on: “That is what a responsible employer should do. We will continue to speak honestly about the impact of technological change, and we will continue to act responsibly in helping our people to adapt and succeed.”
In their bubble, they are gods surrounded by fawning admirers
In effect, he doubled down. His emotional quotient must be through the floor. Cue more hostility and a further LinkedIn post from Winters: “I have received a lot of support for the messages in my previous post but still get questions about my choice of words, which I know has caused upset to some of my colleagues. For that I am sorry.” An apology then, of sorts. But Winters added that he hoped it gave a “better understanding” of what he had said and that he wanted to “help them to cope with the accelerating pace of change in our industry”.
He was not addressing the point that caused such offence, which was not about the impact of AI but the fact he felt able to describe fellow Standard Chartered employees as “lower-value human capital”. He just didn’t get it, which suggests that in his rarified world, such dismissive language is entirely commonplace and is viewed as entirely acceptable.
In their bubble they are gods. They earn colossal amounts and are surrounded by courtiers and fawning admirers. When they gather it is with fellow members of their gilded elite. Davos is an annual high point where they attempt to relate to the rest of the world and put it right. As Tom Wolfe laid bare in his brilliant and still very relevant 1987 novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, they are masters of the universe, their universe.
The Winters comment, the backlash and his reaction are all reminiscent of a previous episode when a senior banker said something that also provoked a storm. This was when Lloyd Blankfein, the then head of Goldman, said what he did was “God’s work”. During a 2009 interview with John Arlidge for The Sunday Times, Blankfein argued that banks serve a societal purpose, that he and his fellow bankers “do God’s work”. According to Forbes, Blankfein has amassed wealth worth $1.8 billion from that work.
In his new memoir, Streetwise, Blankfein maintains he did not utter those words in the interview. “The next day, I saw the British reporter in the waiting area outside my office, where he was interviewing some others at the firm. He said he had just a few more questions for me. Not breaking stride, I joked that I couldn’t stop to talk to him because I was in a hurry, ‘off doing God’s work’. You could call it a Lloydian slip. I’d forgotten the advice from my handlers: Remember, Lloyd, whatever you do, don’t be yourself.”
That was how it was presented to journalists at the time, me included. I was told by a Goldman representative that the exchange occurred by the lifts and it was a funny, throwaway line as Blankfein rushed by.
Not true, says Arlidge. Following the publication of Blankfein’s book in March, Arlidge gave his own account. He said the Goldman chief made the remark, “around 20 minutes into our formal, pre-arranged one-hour sit-down interview in his office at 85 Broad Street in New York in October 2009. I did not see him again afterwards. At the time he did not realise the impact his words would have. I fact-checked the article with Goldman Sachs before the article was published and they did not push back about the words or how, where and when Lloyd said them.”
Arlidge said there was an encounter following the meeting, but it was with Goldman staff, not with Blankfein. That was when the interview was finished. As he was walking out, Arlidge said “the first thing I said to Goldman’s comms team, who had been sitting in, was ‘God’s work, eh?’ A long silence followed as the comms team realised they had failed to notice those two key words — and, therefore, missed the opportunity in the room immediately to try to explain them away.”
Blankfein’s dismissive “British reporter” label is deliberate. In his book, Blankfein reveals how he deals with reporters he dislikes. “If you want to hurt a reporter, ignore him, indicate that you’re unaware of his work. Oh, are you still writing? I didn’t know you were. You haven’t written anything in a long time have you?”
It reminds me of another meeting with a top banker. When Sir Fred Goodwin was in his pomp, I was invited to see him. It was late on a Friday afternoon, at Royal Bank of Scotland’s offices in Bishopsgate, just before a bank holiday weekend. Workers were already gathering on pavements outside City bars.
As we sat at the top of the RBS building in his vast room, Goodwin, who was paid £4.19 million in his final year at the taxpayer-rescued RBS and still receives a pension worth £600,000 a year, became visibly agitated by the sound of the clinking of glasses, chatter and laughter from the streets below. He stood up, walked over to the window, gazed down and asked: “What’s wrong with this town, why does no one do any work?”
Goodwin loathed the sound of the workers, or as Winters might say, lower-value human capital, winding down and enjoying themselves.
