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Two of Goldman Sachs’ top investment bankers have threatened to resign after being left out of a new operating committee set up by Chief Executive Officer David Solomon, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mark Sorrell, co-head of London-based mergers and acquisitions and son of advertising executive Sir Martin Sorrell, and Gonzalo Garcia, co-head of European investment banking, told Goldman they may leave after being dropped from the committee . he said.
Their respective co-heads – Stephan Feldgoise for mergers and acquisitions and Anthony Gutman for European investment banking – were included in the committee, which has around a dozen members. It also includes technology banker Kim Posnett, private equity specialist Pete Lyon and Marshall Smith from the healthcare team.
If they leave, it would be the latest high-profile resignations under Solomon, chief executive since 2018, after a difficult year for the Wall Street firm as it emerged from a loss-making push in consumer credit and suffered a prolonged slowdown of investment banking revenues.
Goldman and Sorrell declined to comment, while Garcia could not be reached for comment.
The source of the latest turmoil is the two new operational committees for investment banking and trading established by Solomon this year. They sit under Goldman’s senior management committee. Both Sorrell and Garcia were excluded from the investment banking committee, the people said.
Conceived as a way to foster a new generation of leaders at Goldman and to streamline decision-making, the new committees ruffled feathers internally over who was in or out, the people said. Noticeably absent from the investment banking committee was anyone from Goldman’s equity capital markets and real estate businesses.
Sorrell, whose two younger brothers also worked at Goldman, started at the firm in 1994 and became a partner in 2010. He was promoted to co-head of M&A alongside Feldgoise in 2020. Garcia, from Chile, is a top-tier utility and natural resources banker who joined Goldman in 1999 and became a partner in 2008.
In another notable departure, Beth Hammack, co-head of the finance group and one of Goldman’s most senior women, will also leave, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Hammack had been selected to the new investment banking committee.
Investment banking and trading had long been separate divisions of Goldman, but were merged in late 2022 by Solomon.
The combined investment banking and markets divisions initially had three co-heads – Jim Esposito, Dan Dees and Ashok Varadhan – but Esposito announced his departure from Goldman last month.
Goldman reported that investment banking fees fell 16% in 2023 due to an industry-wide slump in deal-making activity. Overall, the bank’s profits fell 24% last year.