What Makes Goldman Great?

What exactly is Goldman Sachs doing that is resulting in them dominating the league tables like this? Is it sophisticated financing, impressive tombstones, or are the bankers just better than everyone else? Curious to hear y’all’s thoughts.

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At least within my sector (think HC/TMT/FIG), it's just been a banner year with macro tailwinds, large caps looking to transact, and a good set up on sell side positioning and cashing in on some LT relationships.

We had $1T announced M&A just before the mid year and a large gap between #2. We're an M&A bank at our core (vs. JPM) so when deal vol is up we'll naturally capture that upside.

If you're a BoD and doing a large trxn, can't go wrong with just "hiring Goldman" and getting that GS stamp of approval

I will say at the An/Aso level it has been brutal this year...

 

They benefitted from first mover advantage, being amongst the first few banks that did securitisation and high-yield bonds. They also grew organically, didn't do many high profile acquisitions compared to JPM and have stayed a core multi-service investment bank, not a gigantic retail bank with other corporate divisions. Reputations and legacies that are so long-lasting and well renowned that hiring them is basically a guarantee or seal of approval. I can see how JPM managed to grow and is impressively led by Dimon who knew how to expand across different products, both retail & corporate banking, but GS (and MS to an extent) have largely been the same throughout their history 

 

Works at Goldman Sachs

It’s pretty insane tbh

Left recently for private side (ignore title) PE, my 2c:

A&A varied a lot, some were spectacular and others left a lot to be desired

Network was spectacular, seniors on my side were great, lots of learning

 

There’s nothing particularly great about it, the name brand reputation does a lot of heavy lifting. Take 80% of the bankers (namely seniors) and drop them into a different bank, unlikely they’ll be as successful without the Goldman platform 

 

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