David Solomon
📊 CEO Reputation Score
FY2025 vs FY2024 · Source: SEC EDGAR filings- Free cash flow: −$15.3B → −$47.2B (−208.6% YoY) — fiscal 2025 vs fiscal 2024
- Profit (net income): $14.3B → $17.2B (+20.3% YoY) — fiscal 2025 vs fiscal 2024
🧭 Personal Philosophy & Quotes
Solomon's project since 2018 has been to make Goldman less of a cyclical trading machine and more of a durable franchise: grow asset and wealth management fees, exit what doesn't fit, and let the core advisory and markets businesses do what they do best. The consumer detour — and its expensive unwinding — is the exception that defines the rule he now preaches: stick to clients the firm can serve exceptionally. For investors, he is a 'through-the-cycle' operator whose record is best judged on return on equity across a full deal cycle, not a single banner year.
Operating principles
- Make revenue durable, not just large
- Serve a narrower set of clients exceptionally
- Judge performance through the cycle
“The anomaly is zero interest rates, not a 5% 10-year Treasury.”— CNBC interview, Goldman Sachs Builders & Innovators Summit, Oct 2026
“Our purpose as an organization is to really be the most exceptional financial services firm in the world.”— Goldman Sachs Exchanges podcast, Jan 2026
Overview
Goldman's ninth chairman-CEO is a career dealmaker who spent a decade co-running investment banking, then deliberately shrank the firm's ambitions in consumer finance to refocus on institutional clients and fee income. Shares have roughly quadrupled on his watch — helped by a dealmaking boom he was well positioned to capture.
Education
- B.A. Political Science — Hamilton College
Personal Likes & Life
- Performs as an electronic-music DJ under the name DJ D-Sol; released tracks and played sets alongside his banking career
- Chairs the board of trustees of Hamilton College, his alma mater
- Avid skier and cyclist; a fixture of Goldman's Builders & Innovators conference circuit
Past Experience
Junk-bond era training in leveraged finance; partner-level banker before moving to Goldman.
Runs the Financing Group, then co-heads the Investment Banking Division (2006–2016) for a decade.
Named heir apparent over rivals; cleans up the firm's operating structure.
Succeeds Lloyd Blankfein; launches — and later exits — the consumer push.
🏆 Achievements
- Refocused Goldman on its two durable engines — Global Banking & Markets and Asset & Wealth Management — with fee revenue on a ~$15bn run rate by 2026
- Stock up more than 300% over his tenure amid record earnings years
- Survived board-level succession speculation in 2026 with the board publicly keeping him in place for the medium term
🎙️ Interviews to Watch / Read
CNBC — Solomon at the Builders & Innovators Summit (Oct 2026)https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/videos/cnbc-david-solomon-builders-and-innovators-summit ↗Goldman Sachs Exchanges — Solomon on AI, M&A and markets (Jan 2026)
https://www.goldmansachs.com/pdfs/insights/goldman-sachs-exchanges/goldman-sachs-chairman-and-ceo-david-solomon-on-ai-m-and-a-and-markets/transcript.pdf ↗
⚠️ Failures & Setbacks
- Marcus consumer banking — the push into Main Street lending lost billions and was dismantled (GreenSky and the GM card sold, Marcus wound down) on his watch
- 1MDB aftershocks — Goldman paid over $2.9bn in penalties (2020) for a scandal predating him, but the cleanup and reputational repair defined his early tenure
- Internal discontent over strategy U-turns and partner pay repeatedly leaked into public succession reporting