Goldman Sachs to name former trading boss Tom Montag for board seat

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Goldman Sachs plans to appoint Tom Montag, a former associate on the Wall Avenue agency’s buying and selling division and till just lately a high govt at Financial institution of America, to its board of administrators, based on an individual briefed on the matter. 

The pending appointment of Montag would deliver extra buying and selling and threat administration experience to Goldman’s board, which in recent times has added new members with distinguished careers in company America however who’ve restricted Wall Avenue expertise, together with former Starbucks boss Kevin Johnson and Jessica Uhl, an ex-chief monetary officer at Shell. 

The hole in threat administration experience has been an space that chair and chief govt David Solomon and his fellow board members have been attempting to handle, based on one particular person with data of their considering. 

Goldman declined to remark, whereas Montag couldn’t instantly be reached for remark. Information of Montag’s potential appointment was reported earlier by Bloomberg. 

The addition to the board of a former Goldman heavyweight with deep roots in its buying and selling enterprise would come amid inside dissent about Solomon’s management of the financial institution. Complaints have centred on a failed enlargement into client banking and decrease bonuses for 2022, in addition to longstanding grumbling about Solomon’s passion as a DJ and a call early in his tenure for Goldman to purchase two personal plane. 

After falling by virtually 50 per cent in 2022, Goldman’s internet earnings have continued to say no in 2023 amid a dearth of funding banking charges and slowdown in buying and selling. Solomon is attempting to broaden in asset and wealth administration so Goldman is much less reliant on unstable funding banking and buying and selling, but it surely at the moment doesn’t have the identical steadiness as longtime rival Morgan Stanley. 

Montag spent 22 years at Goldman, rising to be co-head of its highly effective gross sales and buying and selling enterprise and a member of the its administration committee. He joined the unique ranks of Goldman companions in 1994. 

He joined Merrill Lynch in 2008 shortly earlier than its sale to BofA in the course of the monetary disaster. At BofA he regularly amassed extra tasks, rising to be chief working officer, and he was seen as a possible successor to chief govt Brian Moynihan. 

Montag in the end retired from BofA in 2021. In 2022 he grew to become chief govt of Rubicon Carbon, a carbon offset software program platform backed by personal funding group TPG. 

Extra reporting by Stephen Gandel in New York