Lloyd Blankfein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Lloyd Blankfein
Lloyd C. Blankfein.jpg
Lloyd C. Blankfein at FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2011
Chairman & CEO of Goldman Sachs
Incumbent
Assumed office
2006
Preceded by Henry Paulson
Personal details
Born Lloyd Craig Blankfein
(1954-09-20) September 20, 1954 (age 58)
Bronx, New York, USA
Nationality American
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Laura Jacobs Blankfein
Children 3
Residence New York City, New York
Alma mater Harvard College
Harvard Law School
Religion Judaism

Lloyd Craig Blankfein (born September 20, 1954)[1] is an American business executive. He is the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. He has been in this position since the May 31, 2006 nomination of former CEO Henry Paulson as United States Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush.

Contents

Life and career [edit]

Blankfein was born in the Bronx borough of New York City, to a Jewish family,[2] and reared in the Linden Houses, a New York City Housing Authority project in the East New York section of Brooklyn.[3] His father was a clerk with the U.S. Postal Service branch in the Manhattan borough of New York City[4] and his mother was a receptionist. As a boy, he worked as a concession vendor at Yankee Stadium. He received primary and secondary education in the public schools of the New York City Department of Education, and was the valedictorian at Thomas Jefferson High School in 1971. He attended Harvard College, where he lived in Winthrop House, and earned his A.B. in 1975. In 1978, Blankfein received a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

Blankfein worked as a corporate tax lawyer for the law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. In 1981, he joined Goldman's commodities trading arm, J. Aron & Co., as a precious metals salesman in its London office.

He is the Gala Chairman of the Rockefeller family's Asia Society in New York. He serves on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization seeking to alleviate poverty in New York, and on the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College.

Goldman CEO [edit]

Unbalanced scales.svg
 The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (July 2012)

Blankfein earned a total of $54.4 million in 2006 as one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street. His bonus reflected the performance of Goldman Sachs, which reported record net earnings of $9.5 billion. The compensation included a cash bonus of $27.3 million, with the rest paid in stock and options. While CEO of Goldman Sachs Group in 2007, Blankfein earned a total compensation of $53,965,418, which included a base salary of $600,000, a cash bonus of $26,985,474, stocks granted of $15,542,756 and options granted of $10,453,031.[5]

Blankfein was named as one of "The Most Outrageous CEOs of 2009" by Forbes magazine.[6] Taking a different position, Financial Times, which named Blankfein as its "2009 Person of the Year", stated, "His bank has stuck to its strengths, unashamedly taken advantage of the low interest rates and diminished competition resulting from the crisis to make big trading profits."[7] Critics of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street have taken issue with those practices.[8]

On January 13, 2010, Blankfein testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, that he considered Goldman Sachs's role as primarily a market maker, not a creator of the product (i.e., subprime mortgage-related securities).[9] Goldman Sachs was sued on April 16, 2010, by the SEC for the fraudulent selling of a synthetic CDO tied to subprime mortgages, a product which Goldman Sachs had created.[10]

With Blankfein at the helm, Goldman has also been criticized "by lawmakers and pundits for issues from its pay practices to its role in helping Greece mask the size of its debts".[10] Blankfein testified before Congress in April 2010 at a hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.[improper synthesis?] He said that Goldman Sachs had no moral or legal obligation to inform its clients it was betting against the products which they were buying from Goldman Sachs because it was not acting in a fiduciary role.[11]

In April 2011, a Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report accused Goldman Sachs of misleading clients about complex mortgage-related investments in 2007, and Senator Carl Levin alleged that Blankfein misled Congress, though no perjury charges have been brought against Blankfein.[12][13][14]

In August 2011, Goldman confirmed that Blankfein had hired high-profile defense lawyer Reid Weingarten,[15] who had previously represented executives including former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and former Enron accounting officer Richard Causey.[16]

In November 2011, Blankfein was listed as #43 on Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People.

In March 2012, a former Goldman executive, Greg Smith, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs", in which he heavily criticized the firm's top leadership and Blankfein in particular, writing "When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm's culture on their watch."[17]

Smith's op-ed was criticized by many, particularly because he worked at Goldman for 12 years before deciding to quit due to supposed moral objections, but also shed some light on the firm's internal culture, stating, for example, that executives refer to unsophisticated clients as "muppets" and use a strategy of "elephant hunting" to systematically take advantage of their own clients.[17] Commenting on Smith's criticism of Blankfein for such seemingly unprincipled leadership, particularly after saying in a 2009 interview that the firm was "doing God's work",[18] comedian Stephen Colbert pointed out that Blankfein never specified which god, and speculated that it was perhaps Shiva, Lord of Destruction.[19]

Politics [edit]

Blankfein is a contributor to mostly Democratic party candidates and donated $4,600 to Democratic Party candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007.[20] Goldman employees and their relatives contributed almost a million dollars to Barack Obama's presidential campaign — making it "the company from which Obama raised the most money in 2008" — and Blankfein has visited the White House 14 times as of January 2013.[21] Former Goldman executives who hold senior positions in the Obama administration include Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist who is chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.[22] With regard to his personal political views, Blankfein has described himself as "a registered Democrat, and a Rockefeller Republican ... conservative on fiscal issues and more liberal on social issues".[23]

On April 7, 2009, Blankfein recommended guidelines to overhaul executive compensation. According to The New York Times, he said that lessons from the global financial crisis included the need to "apply basic standards to how we compensate people in our industry."[24]

In November 2009, he declared in an interview, as a banker: "I'm doing God's work."[25] Several days later he indicated that he regretted that remark and said he had intended it as a joke. He also apologized on behalf of Goldman Sachs to the public for unspecified "things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret" and which contributed to the financial and economic crisis. The firm announced a 10,000 Small Businesses initiative, committing $500 million to aid American small businesses.[26]

On July 18, 2012, Blankfein commented about the effect of the Libor scandal on the financial system, “There was this huge hole to dig out of in terms of getting trust back and now it’s just that much deeper.” [27] The same day he met Jack Lew, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, and over lunch at the Economic Club of Washington was asked whether he had any aspiration to go into government like predecessors Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin. “I have aspirations to be desired,” he replied.[28]

References [edit]

  1. ^ "Blankfein, Lloyd". Current Biography Yearbook 2011. Ipswich, MA: H.W. Wilson. 2011. pp. 70–73. ISBN 9780824211219. 
  2. ^ Moore, James (24 April 2010). "Lloyd Blankfein: The prince of casino capitalism". The Independent (London). Retrieved April 4, 2011. 
  3. ^ Jacobson, Mark (Sept. 9, 2012). "The Land That Time and Money Forgot". New York. Retrieved 2012-09-11. 
  4. ^ "Laura Jacobs Engaged To Lloyd C. Blankfein". The New York Times. May 15, 1983. Retrieved May 11, 2010. 
  5. ^ CEO Compensation for Lloyd C. Blankfein , Equilar.com
  6. ^ Coster, Helen "The Biggest CEO Outrages Of 2009 - This year's C-Suite Hall of Shame". Forbes. Retrieved December 25, 2009.
  7. ^ Gapper, John "Master of risk who did God's work for Goldman Sachs but won it little love" Financial Times. Retrieved December 25, 2009.
  8. ^ "Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Named Financial Times Person Of The Year". The Huffington Post. Retrieved December 25, 2009.
  9. ^ Kenney, Caitlin (January 13, 2010). "Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Day One". NPR. 
  10. ^ a b "Goldman Shares Tumble on SEC Fraud Allegations"
  11. ^ Quinn, James (April 28, 2010). "Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein denies moral obligation towards clients". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved April 29, 2010. 
  12. ^ "Levin Says Goldman's Blankfein Tried to Mislead Congress". YouTube. 2011-04-14. Retrieved 2013-02-09. 
  13. ^ "Blankfein Hires Lawyer Weingarten for Justice Investigation". Bloomberg Businessweek. 2011-08-22. Retrieved 2013-02-09. 
  14. ^ Schmidt, Robert (2011-04-14). "Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients Over CDOs, Levin Says". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 2013-02-09. 
  15. ^ Shalal-Esa, Andrea (August 22, 2011). "http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/22/us-goldman-blankfein-idUSTRE77L5VK20110822". Reuters. 
  16. ^ Witkowski, Wallace,"Goldman Sachs says Blankfein hires Weingarten: WSJ", MarketWatch, August 22, 2011. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
  17. ^ a b Smith, Greg (March 14, 2012). "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs". The New York Times. 
  18. ^ Phillips, Matt (November 9, 2009). "Goldman Sachs' Blankfein on Banking: 'Doing God’s Work'". The Wall Street Journal. 
  19. ^ Colbert, Stephen (March, 14, 2012). "Greg Smith's Goldman Sachs Op-Ed". The Colbert Report (Viacom). 
  20. ^ "NEWSMEAT ▷ Lloyd Blankfein's Federal Campaign Contribution Report". Newsmeat.com. 2010-08-05. Retrieved 2010-10-02. 
  21. ^ Washington Free Beacon (2013-01-03) Goldman Sachs Suceeds Where Gore Fails, Washington Free Beacon
  22. ^ Greg Gordon Goldman's White House connections raise eyebrows April 21, 2010 McClatchy Newspapers.
  23. ^ Blankfein, Lloyd (April 25, 2012). Interview with Gary Kaminsky. Squawk on the Street. CNBC. New York. http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000086357.
  24. ^ "Goldman Chief Proposes Revamping Wall St. Pay". New York Times. April 7, 2009. 
  25. ^ Interview with the Sunday Times[dead link]
  26. ^ Goldman offers $500m apology for crisis, The Financial Times, November 18, 2009.
  27. ^ "Goldman Sach's Blankfein Says Libor Scandal Undermines Trust". Bloomberg Businessweek. 2012-07-18. Retrieved 2013-02-09. 
  28. ^ "Goldman CEO Blankfein Said to Meet With Obama Adviser Lew". Bloomberg Businessweek. 2012-07-18. Retrieved 2013-02-09. 

External links [edit]

Business positions
Preceded by
Henry Paulson		 Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs
2006–present		 Succeeded by
incumbent
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lloyd_Blankfein&oldid=555140903"