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Goldman Sachs Group has seen $2.15bn of its market value wiped out after

a mid-level executive, the Johannesburg-born Greg Smith, slammed CEO

Lloyd Blankfein’s management and the firm’s treatment of clients. London-

based Smith hit the news after publishing his open resignation letter in the

New York Times last week, calling the Wall Street bank “morally bankrupt.”

After Smith made the accusations, the shares dropped 3,4% in New York

trading on Wednesday, the third-biggest decline in the 81-

company Standard & Poor’s 500 financials index. Smith, who resigned as

executive director and head of the firm’s US equity derivatives business in

Europe, the Middle East and Africa, had worked for Goldman Sachs for 12

years, starting as a summer intern. He joined the bank’s UK offices a year

ago.

In his letter Smith claimed, “The firm has veered so far from the place I

joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say I

identify with what it stands for.”

“And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive

as I have ever seen it,” he said. “I am sad to say that I look around today and

see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm

for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.”

The Stanford University economics graduate blamed the bank’s decline in

moral fibre on its president Gary D Cohn and chief executive officer Lloyd C

Blankfein. He believed this loss was the bank’s “single most serious threat

to its long-run survival.”

“It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping off their clients. Over

the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their

own clients as ‘muppets’, sometimes over internal e-mail.”

The bank, whose client list ranges from governments to major international

Topics

Elliot Wolf, Goldman Sachs,Gregg Smith, Headmaster,Resignation Letter, Wall StreetBank

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SA banker costs Goldman Sachs US$2 billionLondon-based South African banker’s parting shot loses Wall Street firm billions.

By Dan Swinhoe on 20 March, 2012 9:44 am in Business News, Featured, News / 1 comment / EDIT

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3/21/12 SA banker costs Goldman Sachs US$2 billion | The South African

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companies, was quick to deny the accusations levelled by Smith, saying

they were “disappointed” by his assertions.

The letter has attracted a great deal of public comment, many questioning

why it took him so long to come to this realisation. But his former King David

High School teacher has come to his defence. “He was a remarkable

young man, exceptionally intelligent with an integrity that is

probably unequalled,” Elliot Wolf, a retired headmaster said in an

interview with Reuters.

Wolf taught for 34 years at the private Jewish school Smith attended in

Johannesburg before winning a scholarship to Stanford University in the

US.

Wolf called the banker “An absolutely remarkable man with high principles.

That was already part of his character when he was very, very young.” In his

letter, Smith named his proudest moments in life as: “Getting a full

scholarship to Stanford, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national

finalist, and winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the

Maccabiah Games, known as the Jewish Olympics.”

He said these achievements had “all come through hard work, with no

shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and

not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.”

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Yoland Wallace 21 March 2012 at 2:06 am (Edit)

If this is the truth then this Company is as bad as the terrorists who try to destroy our

wonderful planet except that these vultures are destroying peoples lives through their

investments and have no morals about putting their clients

into poverty.. We have seen this before and this is where the underlying hatred of capitalism is creeping

into societies worldwide…

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