David Solomon insists DJ ‘passion’ won’t distract him from running Goldman
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon finally addressed the long-running controversy over his DJing hobby, insisting that spinning records won’t become a distraction as he looks to shore up sagging profits at the Wall Street giant.
“If my doing it publicly in any way is distracting to Goldman Sachs, my No. 1 focus is Goldman Sachs,” the 61-year-old banking boss told the Financial Times at the Global Banking Summit in London this week.
“My daughter got married a month and a half ago, I DJed at her wedding. It’s still a hobby, it’s a passion,” he added.
Solomon’s comments came a year after his disc-jockey alter ego, DJ D-Sol, hung up his headphones at high-profile events after attracting unwanted media attention.
During the first nine months of 2023, Goldman’s profits plunged more than 30%, weighed down by the bank’s $3 billion loss on its consumer-baking ventures over the past three years, as well as a $506 million writedown on GreenSky.
Earnings in the latest quarter plunged 36%, though the latest report wasn’t as dismal as the second quarter’s whopping 58% drop.
Until recently, Solomon had been spinning records at dance clubs frequently since 2015 — three years before he was named top dog at Goldman.
He began landing higher-profile DJ gigs as of 2019 after scoring a spot on the lineup at Tomorrowland, the European dance-music festival is known for its undulating throngs of naked, sweaty, drug-fueled revelers — a move that upset Goldman’s board.
Representatives for Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Solomon, however, didn’t seem fazed by any of the bank’s problems as he spoke on how Goldman plans to pare back its “growth at all costs” strategy in China during FT’s banking summit.
“I think this is something that’s going to take years to resolve because there are real differences,” Solomon said of tensions between Washington and Beijing, according to FT.
“I think the best path to resolution is one for the US and China itself to talk actively,” he also told the outlet — just weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly rebuked efforts to reduce US economic dependence on China while meeting with President Biden for the first time on American soil.
Goldman, meanwhile, has long invested into the world’s second-largest economy, opening its Hong Office more than 40 years ago, in 1994.
The bank, which reportedly has some $2.5 trillion in assets under management, also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Taipei.
Solomon said that five years ago, Goldman was executing a strategy that was more “growth at all costs in China.”
“Today, it’s a more conservative approach [in China] and we’ve probably pared back some of our financial resources there, simply because there’s more uncertainty,” he told FT.
And while on a panel at the summit, Solomon argued that at home in the US, recent proposals by regulators that would force banks to hold more capital won’t make the world’s financial system any safer — and could impact the cost of everything, from airfare to pensioners’ retirement savings, according to Bloomberg.
The Federal Reserve, embattled Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency unveiled in July introduced the proposed rules in July, suggesting that the biggest US banks set aside more capital for a variety of different businesses.
Should the rules pass, “the cost of that goes way up,” Solomon said of uncollateralized derivatives, which he said airlines often use to hedge the price of jet fuel so they can have stability in their pricing, per Bloomberg.
“I don’t think you’re materially changing the safety and soundness in the way that matters compared to the friction and cost,” he added of the proposed rules, known as the Basel III endgame in the US.
“You have to do a really thorough cost-benefit analysis,” Solomon said. “I don’t think that’s been done.”
