Bank of America may be better known for its bond-trading group, but the firm is also home to one of Wall Street's top stock-trading shops — which has ranked fourth in the industry for several years now. 

But the firm's equities unit, which in 2019 saw revenues decline 8% to $4.5 billion, has been a division in flux at the senior levels for the first time in years.

In July, the bank announced two leadership shakeups, including the elevation of Soofian Zuberi to cohead of the group alongside Fabrizio Gallo, the division's sole leader since 2011. After much speculation, Gallo resigned from the firm last month. 

Business Insider has been mapping out the power structure in the firm's global-banking and markets businesses that Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag oversees. We started last summer with fixed income, currencies, and commodities (FICC) — the largest operation in his remit, with $8.4 billion in 2019 revenues. 

Last year we spoke with insiders, ex-employees, consultants, and other industry experts to gain insight into the reporting structure within Montag's stock-trading division. We focused on front-office execs that bear the primary responsibility for driving the group's revenue — no back-office roles appear in our chart. 

A Bank of America spokeswoman declined to comment for this project. 

Up until recently, the two sales and trading groups Montag oversees had distinct power structures. Montag, who climbed the ranks at Goldman Sachs on the back of a stellar fixed-income career, has several key direct reports that share power within FICC.

Read more: Here are the 30 most powerful people in Bank of America's $8 billion bond-trading division, which has had 2 leadership shakeups in 2020

In equities, for years there had only ever been one top dog: Fab Gallo, one of the longest-tenured direct reports in Montag's world.

The group has been more shrouded in mystery than others at firm, eschewing appearances in public and with the media. Publicly available photos of key leaders, including Gallo, are few and far between. 

Gallo, who was a longtime equities exec with Morgan Stanley, was initially hired by Montag to cohead the stock-trading unit in 2011 alongside Mike Stewart. But Stewart decamped for UBS before Gallo got there, and Gallo assumed sole control of the top seat. 

According to senior leaders who've worked with him at the firm, Gallo consolidated power and never let go, keeping a firm grip on the reins and a tight circle of trust. 

But in an organizational shakeup in July, Montag elevated fixed-income trading exec Jim DeMare to global head of markets above Gallo, and he promoted Zuberi, a 25-year company veteran, as his cohead.

Gallo's exit as been speculated ever since, and fast forward three months to late October, he announced his resignation. The same week, long-time fixed-income exec Orly Avidan was tapped to assume Zuberi's old role as global head of equities sales and distribution.

Now, after a decade under Gallo's rule, Bank of America officially has a new division leader. Who is Zuberi? Employees who have worked with the Reed College and Harvard Business School graduate have described him as well-respected and said he has the ear of Montag.

One said he can be an excellent leader, depending on your relationship to the power structure, which they described as "a boy's club." 

Business Insider updated this chart in November to reflect the changes in leadership. We'll continue to update periodically as needed.

We have also mapped out the most powerful people in FICC and investment banking. 

Here are the 20 most powerful people under Montag in Bank of America's equities division. Note that this chart is interactive, so you'll have to click through to see full reporting structure. 

Have more information about the organizational structure within Bank of America Merrill Lynch? Contact the reporter at amorrell@businessinsider.com or via encrypted chat with Signal or Telegram. 

SEE ALSO: Fab Gallo, Wall Street's longest-tenured equities chief, is leaving Bank of America months after having his power checked

SEE ALSO: Bank of America just named a former fixed-income executive to fill one of the most senior positions in its stock-trading business

SEE ALSO: Traders are buzzing about a mysterious market whale that's placing massive bets on stocks skyrocketing post-election

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The Blackstone Group is erasing the G, S and O that once stood for the names of the founders of the firm's sprawling credit division, renaming the unit Blackstone Credit.

The firm announced the change on Monday morning and is sharing the news in meetings with investors, Business Insider has learned. 

"There's a lot more business we can do as the firm itself evolves into something that's more of a one-stop shop," said Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman in a video announcement. 

Normally a name change in Corporate America represents little more than a marketing push, but in this case the development speaks to Blackstone's gradual takeover of GSO over the past 12 years, a process that at times was marked by internal divisions. 

The G, S and O of GSO Capital Group stood for Bennett Goodman, Tripp Smith and Doug Ostrover. Smith and Ostrover have departed the firm and are working on other credit ventures, while Goodman announced his retirement last year, though he remains listed in a reduced role, as a senior advisor. 

Other credit executives have left the firm in recent years as well after Blackstone shuttered its distressed debt hedge fund in 2017. 

Sources close to GSO were expecting the name change to happen sooner or later, as they understood it to be part of Blackstone president Jon Gray's vision to bring GSO completely into the Blackstone fold. 

One source said that GSO executives liked to distance themselves from the Blackstone name, because it helped them offer loans to other PE-backed companies without being perceived as the competition. Another source said that the name change, even though it was no surprise, could be seen as something of an insult to GSO founders.

"I would imagine it is not super welcome," a third source said. 

Blackstone bought GSO in 2008, when the unit had $9.6 billion in assets under management and fewer than 150 employees. Now it has $135 billion in AUM and more than 350 members. 

The video announcement Blackstone unveiled on Monday came with statements of support for the rebrand. 

"Linking the Blackstone brand to our business really meant instant credibility with LPs we had never met, but they know Blackstone and the reputation they've built over 30 years," said Verdun Perry, a senior managing director and global head of strategic partners.

Said Beth Chartoff Spector, head of institutional client solutions at Blackstone Credit: "Taking the Blackstone name is a celebration of the vital link to Blackstone that has propelled our business to become a leading credit investor."

Throughout the two-minute video, there was no mention of the firm's founders. 

Read more:Good deals in pandemic-hit companies are proving hard to find. Here's how big investors that raised billions to pounce on corporate distress are changing up their playbooks.

SEE ALSO: Inside the drama at Blackstone's $129 billion credit division, where pay changes, PR black eyes, and disapproval of its internal hedge fund preceded an exodus in distressed trading

SEE ALSO: 11 ex-Blackstone credit pros who joined shops like Ares and Angelo Gordon and are now helping them go bargain hunting during the downturn

SEE ALSO: Blackstone president Jon Gray reveals how to stand out to land a job at the ultra-competitive firm, which hired just 0.5% of applicants for 2020 analyst jobs

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For 19-year-old Claire Zhou, life has been a lesson in the art of substitutions during the coronavirus pandemic.

Zhou, who finished her first year at Harvard University this spring studying math and computer science, used to start her day with breakfast surrounded by friends before heading to her first 9 a.m. class on the Ivy League campus.

Nowadays, Cambridge, Mass., has been replaced with her hometown of Houston. Her classroom traded places with her bedroom, which doubles as an office. Late-night study sessions with friends in the dorms swapped for catchups on FaceTime. 

This fall, Zhou is taking the semester off from Harvard to intern in software engineering at Two Sigma, a financial firm that manages $58 billion in assets. Its businesses include a quantitative hedge fund, private equity, and market making. In July, while Zhou was completing her first 10-week summer internship with the firm, Harvard announced that, "with only rare exceptions," it would shift all of its classes online for the fall semester.

Feeling less than enthused by the news that she would be in for another virtual semester at Harvard, akin to the one that she had completed in springtime, Zhou approached her managers at Two Sigma in the summer with an unusual request: to extend her internship through the fall semester.

"I had already started looking, honestly, quite frantically for fall internship opportunities" while awaiting Two Sigma's answer, she said.

But during her search, she ran into a snag: "Based on how the recruiting timeline is structured today," she said, "looking for a September start date internship in late July and August is really just too late."

Inside Two Sigma, Zhou's request prompted some introspection about how best to accommodate it, and what it could mean for the future of the firm's internship program. Should the firm offer this extension to all of its interns? Only a select few? 

Ultimately, by early September, Two Sigma decided to offer an internship extension to Zhou and a number of its summer intern class who, given their performance, were in good standing to be invited back to complete either another summer internship at a later date, or be offered a full-time position in the future.

While not all of the interns who were offered the autumn extension accepted it, Zhou and three others — students from Harvard, Stanford, and Caltech — did, and now have the option of extending through the spring semester as well.

College students nationwide have been experimenting with alternatives to online education during the pandemic

When Two Sigma made Zhou's extension official right after Labor Day, "I was beyond thrilled," she recalled. In addition to the chance to stick around through the spring, if she desires, Zhou has already been offered an internship spot at Two Sigma for summer 2021, too.

Zhou's decision to abstain from online classes in favor of sticking with Two Sigma comes amid a broader national trend. More than one third (34.6%) of college students said they planned to withdraw from their fall semester if their classes were fully online, according to the results of a survey released in May by OneClass, a website that offers study materials for students. 

Read more:Data scientists and engineers are leaving Amazon and Facebook for hedge funds. Here are the firms that are winning the battle for top tech talent.

Now, Two Sigma is considering making these autumn internships part of its long-term plans. 

"This has been a great test case for us, and certainly something we're going to be assessing for future years to see if this is something we'll want to continue to offer," Scott Grabarski, a managing director at Two Sigma and its head of engineering HR and talent acquisition, told Business Insider.

"In terms of online schooling, I do think that there's still merit to taking online courses, but there are just some aspects of in-person learning that can't be replaced or replicated in a virtual format," Zhou said. "Coming back to Two Sigma is just a way to continue learning from the environment, all along doing something that I find challenging, fulfilling, as well as impactful."

Zhou's internship extension has led to meaningful growth

For Zhou, the experience she gained having gone through onboarding and training on her summer internship made her transition to her fall internship smoother. "I was already really familiar with how my team operates," she said, and "how to collaborate with my team on a day-to-day basis."

Among the highlights so far: working this summer on a user interface for a tool that displays recommended trades; flexing her software engineering muscle by learning a new coding language; and participating in professional development workshops about networking or how to deliver effective presentations.

See more:Colleges thought they could manage financially in the pandemic. Dropping enrollment rates and COVID-19 outbreaks cropping up on campuses suggest they're wrong.

So far, she's remained on her original team doing software work — only one of the four interns switched teams, Zhou said — but she's now exposed to a variety of projects that are challenging and deepening her knowledge, versus solely focusing on one.

Compared to online classes, this internship has provided a crucial learning opportunity, Zhou said.

"The main differentiating factor is the amount of initiative that I put into doing research ... and figuring out how to implement things on my own," she explained. "I have a lot more freedom to kind of go around and work on what I want to as well as just be really open with my teammates and collaborate with them at a level in which I'm not just an intern, but also their equal."

Many students have expressed disappointment with virtual classes

In March, colleges and universities nationwide shuttered their doors and pivoted to online classes as the coronavirus spread rapidly. But as many as 75% of students said they were unsatisfied by the quality of their digital learning experience, according to the results of survey conducted by OneClass which were published in April. 

This fall, Zhou said that she has noticed "a surge in students on leave."

"A lot of my friends are actually also taking leaves of absence this semester," she said, and, while that was an element motivating Zhou's request to stay at Two Sigma, the chance to grow her skills was the overarching factor underpinning her decision.

Read more:Colleges thought they could manage financially in the pandemic. Dropping enrollment rates and COVID-19 outbreaks cropping up on campuses suggest they're wrong.

Meanwhile, universities are likely to face tough questions over how to make a case for high tuition costs while offering a virtual-only product. Indeed, undergraduate tuition for the 2020-2021 school year at Harvard College is $49,653. 

At Two Sigma, interns earn a salary that would be commensurate with a $135,000 annual salary, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider. Representatives for Harvard University did not respond to a request for comment.

But in spite of Two Sigma's internship extensions this year, Grabarski signaled that it shouldn't be seen as the firm diminishing how it sees the value of a college degree.

"We definitely do value education and we're not looking to encourage students to be dropping out of school," Grabarski said. "While the pandemic has certainly changed how and where our employees work, and in many ways how we recruit, it is too early to say if it will have a broader impact on academic requirements."

SEE ALSO: $60 billion quant fund Two Sigma just hired Goldman Sachs' first-ever chief data officer to lead its massive tech team

SEE ALSO: Colleges thought they could manage financially in the pandemic. Dropping enrollment rates and COVID-19 outbreaks cropping up on campuses suggest they're wrong.

SEE ALSO: THE GATEKEEPERS: 12 headhunting firms to know if you want to land a hedge fund or private-equity job

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Jefferies CEO Rich Handler just shared some advice with young and aspiring Wall Street analysts in a blog post titled "20 things I wish someone had told me the day I started my career as an analyst on Wall Street."

Handler is the CEO of Jefferies Financial Group, and one of the highest-paid executives on Wall Street. He was named the highest-paid CEO at a New York-based company by Crain's after his compensation package totaled nearly $45 million in 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal. He's also something of an influencer, with almost 26,000 Instagram followers, and he cohosts virtual events with well-known finance meme account Litquidity.

Much of Handler's advice applies to the finance world but is also relevant to people in any field. He says he wishes he had taken more vacations, gotten more involved with recruiting new graduates, and had the self confidence to stand up to people who were taking advantage of him. 

The blog post grew out of a Q&A session Handler held for second and third-year analysts. He decided to expand his list and share it publicly because "I strongly believe that life is not a zero-sum game and we are all in this together."

Read Handler's full list here.

SEE ALSO: Here's when stores will open for Black Friday sales

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Goldman Sachs is forging ahead with plans to divert more employees out of traditional banking capitals like New York, London, and Hong Kong in favor of relocating them to lower-cost cities including Salt Lake City, Dallas, and Bangalore, India.

After months of unorthodox work arrangements during the coronavirus pandemic, Goldman is now feeling a "much greater degree of confidence" about stationing "larger aggregations" of employees and business lines in those cities, Stephen Scherr, Goldman's chief financial officer, said on Monday at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Future of Financials Conference.

"I think that will drive some considerable cost savings for us as we reposition populations and businesses into more affordable locations around the world," Scherr added.

Read more:Goldman Sachs is now hiring high-school graduates for roles in Salt Lake City, one of the company's 'high value' locations

Goldman's relocation efforts are part of a broader strategy laid out at the bank's investor day in January, which is directed at slashing $1.3 billion in costs over the course of three years.

John Waldron, Goldman's president and chief operating officer, said at the firm's investor day on January 29 that as much as one-third of Goldman's global workforce — which numbers about 40,000 — had already set up shop in "key strategic locations," including Salt Lake City; Dallas; Bangalore, India; and Warsaw, Poland.

"Our goal is to increase this percentage and get closer to 40% over a reasonable period of time," Waldron said, according to a transcript of his remarks at the January event. "Our investment in these strategic locations enables us to build centers of excellence around specific capabilities that support our business initiatives, AI, cloud and data analytics."

Waldron's investor-day presentation also specified multiple ways in which Goldman foresaw achieving the $1.3 billion in cost cuts. Among them were what the firm called "campus consolidation" and the push to divert employees in costlier cities to lower-cost ones, which feeds into its real-estate cost-savings strategy.

A representative for Goldman Sachs declined to provide further comment to Business Insider.

Goldman has been moving employees to lower-cost cities for several years

Goldman Sachs has long seen an expansion into locations like Salt Lake City as a boon for its back-office operations, Business Insider has previously reported. Shifting back-office activities to cities that don't come with high overhead, like New York and London, plays a key element in the bank's cost-cutting strategy. 

A recent example of Goldman's continued staffing efforts came earlier this year when the company posted jobs in late March for positions in Salt Lake City that didn't require a college degree, Business Insider previously reported. Such roles, like one for a process coordinator, were still being offered on Goldman's website on Monday morning. 

Read more:Wall Street job cuts are back — here's the latest on what Goldman, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, and other banks are doing

Meanwhile, relocating employees isn't the only way Goldman is cutting costs this year. Goldman kicked some job-trimming measures back into gear in fall after suspending any cuts during the initial height of the pandemic. 

Bloomberg first reported in September that Goldman planned to reduce its head count by about 1% of its overall workforce, or about 400 positions.

SEE ALSO: We mapped out the power structure at Goldman Sachs and identified the bank's 125 top execs. Here's our exclusive org chart.

DON'T MISS: Inside the rise of Ram Sundaram, the leader of a secretive Goldman Sachs desk that's minting billions by designing some of the bank's most imaginative — and controversial — trades

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The markets have come back down to Earth after a wild Monday. Some additional details about a potential Pfizer vaccine have also come out, which illustrate how complex a process it will be to widely distribute.

If you're not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here to get your daily dose of the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.

We're also launching a new newsletter — 10 things in Politics You Need to Know Today — later this month. Sign up here. 

Like the newsletter? Hate the newsletter? Feel free to drop me a line at ddefrancesco@businessinsider.com or on Twitter @DanDeFrancesco. 

Messenger apps like WhatsApp and WeChat have become a massive headache for Wall Street compliance departments. 

Reed Alexander has a great deep dive into why traders are so keen to use these apps in lieu of traditional, compliant forms of communications with clients. 

Click here to read the entire story.

Bradley Saacks with another nice piece on a new report out of $330 million short-seller Spruce Point Capital on a company it alleges is using "manipulative accounting."Read the whole story here. 

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When Vista Equity Partners' founder Robert Smith admitted last month to years of evading taxes, one of the industry's big questions was whether Smith's admission would hurt the firm's fundraising efforts. 

As one of the world's largest-private equity firms, Vista collects money from pension funds, foundations, endowments and sovereign wealth funds, among others, who use a high bar to judge the moral character of the investment managers they entrust with their money. The question was if they would blanch at Smith's admitted behavior.

There's new evidence to suggest that at least one manager has: the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, charged with overseeing the state's $14 billion pension fund for public-school and higher education employees.

The board has decided not to go forward with a planned $100 million check to Vista's third credit fund, known as Vista Credit Partners III, according to Bob Jacksha, the board's chief investment officer. NMERB had gotten approval for the investment in April. 

"We elected not to close on the investment," Jacksha said in an interview, declining to comment on the reasoning of his decision.

A person familiar with the talks, however, said the decision came after a Bloomberg News report in August that said Smith was being investigated by the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service over a criminal case involving years of tax evasion.

Read more:Inside Vista Equity Partners, where a top exec is negotiating a messy exit and questions over the future loom large

In October, Smith signed a five-year non-prosecution agreement with the US admitting to not paying taxes on $200 million in income parked in offshore structures. 

Greg Myers, global head of capital and partner solutions at Vista Equity Partners, told Business Insider in an e-mailed statement provided by a spokesman that the firm had over 700 other investors and more than $75 billion under management.

"While New Mexico Educational Retirement Board elected back in August not to make its inaugural investment with Vista's credit fund, other New Mexico pensioners have enjoyed returns of greater than 20% net IRR investing with Vista for close to a decade," Myers said. "We will continue to drive forward on our work to engineer strong returns for state-driven retirement platforms and all our investors."

The current status of fundraising for Vista Credit Partners III could not be determined. But as of October 2019, Buyouts reported that the fund had raised $700 million, with a target of $2 billion. 

The credit division, which has more than $3 billion in assets under management, is led by David Flannery, who joined Vista in 2018 from Blackstone. In July of this year, the firm announced that it had led a $150 million debt financing for Afiniti, a data and software company focused on developing AI for use in customer call centers.

April due diligence found Vista had 'nothing to disclose' 

In April, when NMERB was considering its investment, investment staff said its due diligence process hadn't turned up anything that would lead it to recommend against the investment, according to the minutes of that month's meeting. 

Kay Chippeaux, deputy CIO at NMERB, "said Vista had nothing to disclose in the disclosure documents submitted to the ERB," according to minutes from the April meeting. By then, the investigation into Smith had been going on for at least four years. 

Chippeaux did mention another matter, though New Mexico officials ultimately decided that the information shouldn't influence its decision. NEPC, the consultant state officials were using to help vet the investment, employs Neil Sheth, the brother of Vista president Brian Sheth, as director of global research.

"ERB staff found this interesting but not influential in the decision to pursue this opportunity," according to the minutes.

In fact, pension officials were feeling positive about the investment. It's a "timely investment, because the ERB wants to look for more stable companies because the environment is volatile," the minutes say, describing comments made in the meeting by Jacksha. "In addition, this is an area the ERB doesn't have much exposure to in the investment portfolio, so this is a good addition."

The investment committee voted unanimously to approve the $100 million commitment. While the vote gave the investment staff the approval it needed, the final commitment was subject to the completion of final talks over terms and conditions, and more paperwork.

By September, the fund had decided to walk away.

This post has been updated to reflect that Kay Chippeaux is the deputy CIO at NMERB, and not an employee of outside consultant NEPC as first written. 

SEE ALSO: Inside Vista Equity Partners, where a top exec is negotiating a messy exit and questions over the future loom large

SEE ALSO: 11 ex-Blackstone credit pros who joined shops like Ares and Angelo Gordon and are now helping them go bargain hunting during the downturn

SEE ALSO: 40 insiders reveal the meteoric rise of Silver Lake's Egon Durban, the tech-focused PE firm's No. 1 dealmaker who strong-armed his way to the top and is about to get $18 billion more to invest

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A compliance executive who oversees markets and securities services at a top Wall Street bank said messaging apps have become more of a pressing issue in the past two or three years. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy freely.

And while firms can warn people to stay off certain apps and offer company-approved devices and channels, there's always the temptation to meet client preferences or use WhatsApp for more informal communications inside the firm. 

If a bank is dealing with a client that uses WeChat or WhatsApp, and that's the way they want to communicate, "it creates a challenge for us," this compliance exec told Business Insider. 

Business Insider spoke with more than a dozen traders, compliance experts, tech providers, and other market participants to learn about a surge in WhatsApp use, how Wall Street firms are trying to stop it, and why traders keep getting caught in the fallout.

SUBSCRIBE NOW TO READ THE FULL STORY: Inside Wall Street's war on WhatsApp: Why traders just won't quit messaging apps, even as heads roll

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UBS is on a quest to tap its $2.75 trillion wealth management division's deep well of ultra-rich clients to help drive more business to its investment bank, deploying bankers around the US to make it happen. 

The Swiss firm is making a bigger push to bring together its wealth management business and investment bank, a strategy unfolding in different cities and targeting more middle-market deals than the firm has in the past.

"In the past, we've always been very good as a firm at collaborating between the IB and wealth management, and trying to find those opportunities and convert them into banking transactions," but those efforts have previously been more "episodic," Paul Crisci, global head of private wealth markets, told Business Insider.

In effect, the firm is assigning investment bankers to offices around the US dubbed private-wealth service hubs, primarily in some of the country's most monied cities to support public- and private-company transactions with elite private-wealth financial advisor teams. 

So far, the initiative has been rolled out in six cities — Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, West Palm, Chicago, and Dallas — with fewer than 10 participating investment bankers across those regions. 

Read more:UBS is rolling out the red carpet for ultra-rich people and family offices who want in on private-market deals

Crisci described his strategy alongside Jennifer Gabrielli, deputy head of the ultra-high-net-worth segment in the Americas for UBS's private wealth unit, as setting out to achieve some "quick wins." 

"The thought was, let's prove out the model with a smart, but prudent investment. Once we have the proof points that the strategy is working, we will invest more. I know senior management will give us the opportunity to do that, or we will adjust the strategy," said Crisci, who joined UBS in 2015 from Jefferies, where he was the global co-head of technology investment banking. 

Crisci has already worked at the intersection of wealth and private markets for UBS. In July 2019, the investment bank launched a group under his leadership geared toward working across the bank, wealth management, and asset management to cater to investors interested in access to private-market deals, according to a memo reviewed by Business Insider. 

In May 2020, Business Insider reported on the expansion of that group — called Private Financing Markets — due to an increased appetite from clients for alternative investments. This latest coordinated strategy represents further outgrowth of those efforts.

Read more:The head of UBS's US wealth business explained lessons learned from remote work, and how it landed on Skype as its preferred video-conferencing tool

One UBS financial advisor explained the new effort to Business Insider this way: "If I'm a financial advisor and I have a really good relationship with my investment banking team, I can just call up my guy and say, 'I have a deal. Can you do this for me?'" 

Expanding investment-banking services could help attract new business, said the advisor, who requested anonymity to discuss the strategy because he was not authorized to do so. 

The initiative comes as UBS, which focused on building out its sturdy wealth business in the years following the financial crisis of 2008, has restructured its investment bank in the last year to help improve slumping performance.

UBS's wealth management business is among the world's largest, with most of its financial advisors and assets in the US. It reported a 10% rise in invested assets for the third quarter to $2.75 trillion, which it attributed in part to strong market performance.

The firm's new chief executive, Ralph Hamers, started in his post at the start of November after taking over from Sergio Ermotti, who has led the bank for nearly a decade and oversaw multiple overhauls of the investment bank.  

SPAC mania aiding the business amid stiff competition 

As this initiative has ramped up this year, a new frenzy around an old type of deal started gripping investment banking: special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). They are designed as shell corporations to take companies public outside of the traditional initial public offering process. 

From the start of 2020 through July 31, Goldman Sachs strategists counted 51 SPAC offerings raising $21.5 billion, up 145% from the same period a year prior. Roughly halfway through this year, the number of SPAC debuts had matched the total number of deals completed in all of 2019. 

The boom has helped UBS as it meshes investment banking and wealth management operations. 

"From a client perspective, I'd say the most demonstrative link is around SPACs, which has helped to build our IB presence in that space to quite a notable position," Gabrielli said in a recent phone interview, referring to underwriting activity. "And it's a virtuous cycle. Our clients then see that in the marketplace, and we're getting inbounds on, 'How can I get involved with your IB around SPACs?'"

UBS has the fifth-highest underwriting volume for SPACs in 2020 among investment banks, according to SPAC Research. 

For instance, SPAC sponsors in some cases already have wealth management relationships with the firm, and the investment bank then helps those clients raise capital. In May, Business Insider reported UBS was increasing efforts to allocate a greater portion of its SPACs to high-net worth clients and family offices. 

Read more: UBS has started pitching its wealth management customers on 'blank-check' companies as the bank looks to tap into a SPAC frenzy

Crisci said the team conducts a weekly call to go over the venture between wealth and investment banking and go through bankers' pipelines, managing it "the way you would manage a coverage effort in the [investment bank], rather than a sector-oriented coverage effort."

As UBS makes an effort to target more middle-market deals that are smaller than what the investment bank tends to handle, competitors are executing similar strategies.

Business Insider reported last year that Bank of America's US-based dealmakers opened shop in six new cities in 2019, including Nashville and Salt Lake City, as part of an effort to boost investment banking fees with smaller deals in markets outside the major US money centers. 

Read more: Bank of America wants to dominate middle-market investment banking. Here are the new teams, hires, and cities it's adding to make that happen.

Meanwhile Goldman Sachs last year assembled a team of senior bankers dedicated to forming relationships with middle-market private-equity firms and, by extension, their portfolio companies, Business Insider reported. 

For UBS, expanding its investment-banking presence should help tie together the bank's long list of services in the eyes of its clientele, Gabrielli said.

"With this level of collaboration, if you're a client, you just see UBS. You don't see UBS in ten different silos trying to face off with you for different aims, not coordinated," Gabrielli said. 

Ultimately, a client is looking at "one UBS," she said. "They don't care how we deliver it, just as long as we do."

SEE ALSO: UBS is rolling out the red carpet for ultra-rich people and family offices who want in on private-market deals

SEE ALSO: Bank of America wants to dominate middle-market investment banking. Here are the new teams, hires, and cities it's adding to make that happen.

SEE ALSO: Goldman Sachs is assembling a team of senior bankers focused on middle-market private equity. Here are the key hires and the playbook they'll use to land new clients.

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Goldman Sachs announced a new class of partners for 2020 on Thursday afternoon, awarding partner status to 60 people worldwide. Seven out of the 19 new partners in the investment-banking division came from the TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications) group, representing a big year for executives in that sector.

Overall, the new partner class is composed of 27% women, 17% Asian partners, 7% Black partners, and 5% Latinx partners, according to Goldman. In total, Goldman says, 47% falls into diverse categories.

With the 60 new partners, Goldman's total partner pool is now 18% women, but certain categories — for instance, Black partners (3%), Latinx partners (2%), and LGBTQ partners (1%) — continue to make up fewer than one in 20 people in the class.

Meanwhile, for those who received partnership, the perks are noteworthy: Goldman Sachs partners earn a base salary of about $950,000 and have access to a bonus pool that only partners can tap into.

Goldman's new class comes on the heels of a growing number of departures since CEO David Solomon assumed the post from Lloyd Blankfein in 2018. About 60 partners had departed the firm as of earlier this year since the November 2018 partner class was announced.

Read more: Goldman Sachs has lost at least 54 partners since David Solomon became CEO. We're keeping a running list — and compiling details from insiders about how the exits are being celebrated.

And Solomon has been interested in reducing the number of partners at the firm to make the status more elite and exclusive, awarding partnership to rainmakers as opposed to back-office executives in human resources or operations, Business Insider has previously reported.

For context, in 2018 there were 484 partners, but as of Thursday's announcement, Goldman's total number of partners amounted to fewer than 440, according to a person familiar with the situation, which would equate to roughly 1% of Goldman's nearly 40,000-employee worldwide workforce.

Here's the full list of Goldman Sachs partners announced on Thursday:

Zachary Ablon, Global Markets, New York

Anne-Victoire Auriault, Global Markets, New York

Jose Barreto, Investment Banking, London

John Brennan, Investment Banking, London

Richard Chambers, Global Markets, New York

Travis Chmelka, Global Markets, New York

William Connolly, Investment Banking, San Francisco

Yasmine Coupal, Investment Banking, San Francisco

Adam Crook, Global Markets, London

Simon Dangoor, Asset Management, London

Rajashree Datta, Risk, New York

Darren Dixon, Global Markets, New York

Lisa Donnelly, Operations, London

David Dubner, Investment Banking, New York

Jane Dunlevie, Investment Banking, San Francisco

Orla Dunne, Engineering, London

Ilya Gaysinskiy, Engineering, Jersey City

Wendy Gorman, Risk, New York

Jett Greenberg, Global Markets, New York

Phillip Han, Global Markets, New York

Michael Hui, Asset Management, Hong Kong

Rajiv Kamilla, Global Markets, New York

David Kamo, Investment Banking, New York

Nimesh Khiroya, Investment Banking, London

Jerry Lee, Investment Banking, New York

Christina Ma, Global Markets, Hong Kong

Hillel Moerman, Asset Management, New York

Aimee Mungovan, Investment Banking, New York

Kaushik Murali, Global Markets, New York

Sara Naison-Tarajano, Consumer & Wealth Management, New York

Mike Nickols, Investment Banking, New York

Ryan Nolan, Investment Banking, San Francisco

Bartosz Ostenda, Investment Banking, San Francisco

David Plutzer, Legal, New York

Nick Pomponi, Investment Banking, New York

Nicole Pullen Ross, Consumer & Wealth Management, New York

Muhammad Qubbaj, Global Markets, New York

Max Ramirez, Asset Management, London

Neema Raphael, Engineering, New York

Riccardo Riboldi, Global Markets, London

Osmin Rivera, Global Markets, New York

Brian Robinson, Global Markets, New York

Cosmo Roe, Investment Banking, New York

Jennifer Roth, Global Markets, New York

Jonathan Rousse, Global Markets, New York

Yassaman Salas, Investment Banking, New York

Gunjan Samtani, Engineering, Bengaluru

Michael Schlee, Compliance, New York

Leonard Seevers, Asset Management, New York

Ales Sladic, Global Markets, Hong Kong

Miruna Stratan, Investment Banking, New York

Michael Ungari, Asset Management, New York

Nicholas van den Arend, Investment Banking, London

Alex von Moll, Global Markets, London

Heather von Zuben, Asset Management, New York

Monali Vora, Asset Management, New York

Michael Voris, Investment Banking, New York

David Wade, Global Markets, London

Karl Wianecki, Asset Management, Jersey City

Mark Wilson, Global Markets, London

SEE ALSO: Inside the rise of Ram Sundaram, the leader of a secretive Goldman Sachs desk that's minting billions by designing some of the bank's most imaginative — and controversial — trades

DON'T MISS: We mapped out the power structure at Goldman Sachs and identified the bank's 125 top execs. Here's our exclusive org chart.

NEXT UP: Goldman Sachs' CFO explained why he's feeling more confident about plans to move employees to lower-cost hubs like Salt Lake City and Dallas

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• Bill Ackman discussed his loss-making investment in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway during a virtual speech at the Sohn Hearts & Minds conference this week, according to the Australian Financial Review.
• "We have probably lost more money in Berkshire than anyone in the world," the billionaire investor and Pershing Square chief said.
• Pershing Square invested in Buffett's company in the second quarter of 2019, held a $1 billion stake at the end of March, and sold the entire position by May.
• Ackman and his team exited Berkshire partly because they were "expecting Buffett to be super aggressive as markets came in, and we were surprised that he was not more so," he said.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

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Billionaire investor Bill Ackman bemoaned his losing bet on Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway during a virtual appearance at the Sohn Hearts & Minds investment conference this week, according to the Australian Financial Review.

"We have probably lost more money in Berkshire than anyone in the world," Ackman said.

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His Pershing Square hedge fund took a position in the famed investor's conglomerate in the second quarter of 2019. It later leveraged some of the $2.6 billion it made hedging the pandemic in spring, boosting its holding to 5.5 million shares worth almost $1 billion at the end of March.

Ackman recalled telling his team they shouldn't sell Berkshire because it would wade into the danger and snap up bargains, as it did during the financial crisis and other tumultuous periods.

"We were expecting Buffett to be super aggressive as markets came in, and we were surprised that he was not more so," the hedge-fund manager said, according to AFR. He added that he views Buffett as an "unofficial mentor" and has "enormous respect" for him, the publication said.

Read More: Goldman Sachs says to load up on these 22 energy stocks set to soar as the market recovers — and details 10 to ditch

Buffett confirmed a lack of big deals during the company's annual meeting in May. The investor seemed primarily focused on weathering the pandemic, and disclosed that Berkshire had sold its stakes in the "big four" US airlines in April.

Pershing sold its entire Berkshire position shortly after, stomaching a roughly 10% loss, Ackman said at the conference, according to AFR.

Ackman and his team were taken aback that Buffett hadn't tapped his vast cash reserves during the downturn, decided they could be more nimble than Berkshire due to their smaller size, and wanted to free up cash to deploy if markets tumbled again, they said on a conference call in May.

Berkshire's second-quarter portfolio update likely confirmed their view. It revealed that Buffett and his team had not only dumped their airline stocks, but also taken a knife to numerous financial holdings including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan, fueling $12.8 billion in net equity sales in the period.

Read More: Morningstar's chief US market strategist breaks down why the rotation into value stocks is bound to continue — and pinpoints 4 of the cheapest areas of the market with the most upside

However, Berkshire shifted gears last quarter, announcing about $19 billion worth of investments. The company struck deals with Dominion Energy and Scripps, and also bought shares in Bank of America, Snowflake, and five Japanese trading companies.

Moreover, its third-quarter earnings last week revealed it repurchased a record $9 billion of its own shares in the period, and made net stock purchases of $4.8 billion. It will reveal which US stocks it bought and sold in a regulatory filing in the next few days.

Join the conversation about this story »

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Goldman Sachs is putting a lot of stock in its dealmaking efforts in the tech industry.

The elite Wall Street bank announced its 2020 partner class on Thursday — and seven of the 19 investment bankers elevated to partner status came from the bank's technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) group.

On the whole, Goldman elevated 60 people to partner status, which brings the total number of partners at the elite Wall Street firm to fewer than 440, a reduction in the historical partner class size, which reflects CEO David Solomon's efforts to tighten the pool on the partner class and make it more exclusive. 

Read more:Goldman Sachs just dropped the names of its 2020 partner class, and it's a big day for investment bankers in TMT

Nick Pomponi, a co-head of global software investment banking, told Business Insider that the number of TMT partners elevated on Thursday demonstrates the value that the firm places on its tech practice. 

"I think it just really demonstrates the investment that Goldman is putting into our technology practices, and our team broadly," Pomponi said, adding that it's also a nod toward "how busy we all expect to be over the years to come." 

Goldman Sachs' entire investment-banking business ranks number one in mergers and acquisitions (307 deals) and bookrunning for equity capital markets (501 transactions), according to Dealogic. 

On Friday, DoorDash released its filing to go public with Goldman Sachs playing a leading role in advising on the IPO. Dating app Bumble is reportedly considering an IPO in 2021, and plans to have Goldman Sachs also lead that, according to Bloomberg. 

For reference, once you make partner at Goldman, you earn a base salary of at least $950,000 plus have access to a bonus pool that only partners can pull from. 

We rounded up the seven TMT investment-banking partners that Goldman elevated on Thursday. Here's a look at their backgrounds, their education, and some of the top-tier clients they advise who have helped them reach this zenith in their careers.

SEE ALSO: Here are the 7 Goldman Sachs power players advising on industry-defining deals like Blackstone's $18.7 billion bet on warehouses

SEE ALSO: We mapped out the power structure at Goldman Sachs and identified the bank's 125 top execs. Here's our exclusive org chart.

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William Connolly, head of tech ECM

Location: San Francisco

Tech IPOs: Snowflake, Pinterest, Okta, Slack, Elastic, CrowdStrike

Education: BA in economics from Duke University

Background: Connolly focuses on equity-related matters in the TMT space, including IPOs. He served five years on the TMT group. Connolly joined Goldman in 2005 as an analyst, and was named managing director in 2015. 

Yasmine Coupal, head of TMT debt capital markets group

Location: San Francisco

Led offerings to: Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Disney, Intel, Qualcomm 

Education: BA in economics and MA in international policy from Stanford University

Background: Coupal first landed at Goldman in 2004 as an analyst. She previously served on the credit risk management and advisory team. In 2015 she was named a managing director. She also serves on the board of Global Citizen Year, a nonprofit that helps a diverse group of high school seniors take a gap year abroad to be immersed in the local culture. 

Jane Dunlevie, co-head of global internet investment banking

Location: San Francisco

Deals include: Shopify, Pinterest, Cloudflare, PayPal, Zillow

Education: BA and MBA from Stanford University

Background: Dunlevie joined Goldman in 2007 as an analyst, becoming a VP in 2014 and a managing director in 2017. She sits on the board of directors for the Lucile Packard Foundation, a public charity focused on children's health. Dunlevie's father is Bruce Dunlevie, cofounder of well-known VC firm Benchmark. 

Ryan Nolan, co-head of global software investment banking

Location: San Francisco

Advisor to: Hewlett-Packard, Zenimax, Unity, Netflix

Education: BBA in finance from the University of Notre Dame; MBA and JD from Duke University

Background: Nolan joined Goldman in 2012, rising to the position of managing director in 2015. Before joining the bank, Nolan was a senior associate at law firm Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. 

Nick Pomponi, co-head of global software investment banking

Location: New York City

Advisor to: Ultimate Software, IBM, Datadog, Costar, Endurance, Vertex, Duck Creek

Education: BA in economics from Villanova University; MBA from University of Virginia's Darden School of Business

Background: Pomponi came to Goldman Sachs in 2007 as an associate. After serving as a business unit manager within the TMT group from 2009 to 2010, he was promoted to managing director in 2013. Prior to joining the bank, he worked in EY's tech consulting division and spent two years as an associate at JPMorgan in its TMT group. 

Nick van den Arend, co-head of global software investment banking

Location: London

Advisor to: Sophos, TeamViewer, Visma

Education: BA in history from University of Cambridge

Background: van den Arend's remit includes European technology companies. He previously worked with the UK Advisory Group on deals before joining the TMT group. van den Arend started his career at Goldman as a analyst in 1995, leaving in 1998 to work at financial tech company Misys. He returned to Goldman in 2005 as an associate before being named a managing director in 2010. 

Mike Voris, head of convertibles and private placements

Location: New York

Notable convertibles transactions: Square, Shopify, Snap 

Education: BA in history from Cornell University

Background: Voris landed at Goldman in 2010 as a vice president, and was promoted to managing director in 2011. Prior to joining the bank, Voris was at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, focusing on equity derivatives and convertible capital markets. 

Regulatory veteran Gary Gensler has officially been tapped by President-elect Joe Biden to lead his financial policy transition team. A large responsibility of Gensler's new role will be to oversee Wall Street and the regulations that govern it. 

The appointment was announced by the Biden campaign on Tuesday, after initial reports of the expected move the previous Friday.

As part of Biden's transition team, Gensler will be leading an effort to review the Federal Reserve and banking and securities regulators, according to Bloomberg.

Gensler, who during the Obama administration spearheaded watchdog efforts as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates the United States' derivatives markets, will likely knuckle down on financial and consumer protection policies, four securities lawyers, some of whom are former regulators, told Business Insider.

At the same time, given his Wall Street roots, Gensler's tough approach could be, at the very least, acknowledged by banks who recognize him as one of their own — even as he "ruffled a lot of feathers" by imposing strict rules in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, per one expert — and ultimately lead to the development of a healthier market.

Gensler has a decades-long track record as a hard-knuckle regulator

There's no doubt that Gensler is well suited to the task, according to securities experts.

"He obviously has the necessary background," said James Cain, partner at Eversheds Sutherland. "Gensler has the most well-rounded set of experiences: He's worked on Wall Street, the Treasury, the Hill, academia… He's covered all the bases."

Before launching his two-decade-long career as a fearsome regulator, Gensler spent 18 years as a star banker at Goldman Sachs, eventually becoming one of the youngest partners at 30 years old.

He traded his life in investment banking for public service in 1997, when Gensler joined the United States Department of Treasury. During his four-year tenure, he pushed for the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted over-the-counter derivatives from regulation.  

Gensler then began advocating for policies that called for stricter regulation, playing an instrumental role in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was designed to protect investors by imposing disclosure requirements on companies.

Gensler ultimately cemented his reputation as a fearsome and "zealous regulator" when he was tapped by then-President-elect Barack Obama to lead the CFTC in December 2008, said Cain. He described how Gensler transformed the CFTC from a once-sleepy agency into a regulatory body with "substantially greater authority," orchestrating several key provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, the 2010 instrumental law that overhauled financial regulation and was largely seen as a crackdown on Wall Street, including implementing regulation of swaps and other derivatives that played a role in the financial crisis. 

He was also credited with revitalizing the agency's enforcement of cases, specifically over investment banks' manipulation of Libor, the London interbank offered rate, in 2012.

Although he'll undoubtedly enact tougher regulations, Gensler, as "one of Wall Street's own," is recognized by banks as someone who knows the industry

Gensler's banking roots and policymaking background present a double-edged sword when it comes to deciphering how he'll be received by financial institutions.

"On the one hand, Wall Street is comforted by the fact that he at least came from their background and knows them, and is not out to destroy them," said Robert Litan, former principal deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division of the Justice Department. "On the other hand, Gary was known as the top regulator. He's not the kind of person who's going to lay down and let them walk all over him."

Aitan Goelman, who headed the CFTC's enforcement division under Gensler's successor, Timothy Massad, in 2014, told Business Insider that while Gensler, who "ruffled a lot of feathers" with his "aggressive style and substance," likely won't be welcomed by banks, he at least understands the real needs of banks.

"He knows what would be a death sentence or deal breaker," Goelman said.

Trace Schmeltz, a partner who heads Barnes & Thornburg's financial and regulatory litigation group, agrees that even though Gensler undoubtedly will favor stricter regulation, he's not going to "gum up the mechanism."

"He's one of Wall Street's own," Schmeltz said. "Even though he has a heavier hand with regulation than some might like, people count on him to do what he does with a real insider's working knowledge of the industry."

Evershed Sutherland's Cain used a "reform smoker" analogy to describe how he thinks that Gensler, with his nearly 20 years at Goldman, will be "harder on the street" than someone who hasn't been there. "People shouldn't think he's going to go easy on them. He did lead the CFTC, after all," Cain said.

Under Gensler's oversight, regulatory agencies will "get their teeth back," leading to a healthier and more innovative market

The last four years have seen a "significant dismantling" of regulatory agencies like the CFTC and the Securities & Exchange Commission, by the Trump administration refusing to either fill positions at these agencies, or meet funding requests, according to Schmeltz.

With an increased emphasis on consumer protection under Gensler's oversight, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been "defanged" in the last four years, will "get their teeth back," added Litan. 

Both Litan and Schmeltz think that Gensler, who is known for his savvy knowledge of cryptocurrency and blockchain and how these technologies relate to the financial industries, will also bring about more innovation to the market, which has seen major disruption in the last four years by the monumental rise of the fintech industry.

Ultimately, all experts agree that stricter regulations under the prospective Biden administration will lead to a healthier, more trustworthy market. Banks recognize that these rules act as "guardrails," designed to help them limit their exposure to liability, explained Cain.

"Everyone's going to need to mind their p's and q's under the Biden administration much more than they had to do in a Trump administration," said Schmeltz. "But by and large, organizations understand that they have an obligation to do things correctly… In the main, this will be better for the markets, because there will be more transparency, trust, and credibility." 

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Heather von Zuben went to bed in New York City on Wednesday night feeling anxious.

Indeed, on Thursday morning, she would find out news that could change the course of her professional career: a spot in Goldman Sachs' latest class of partners.

Her daughter even said a prayer that it would work out.

On Thursday morning, while awaiting the news, von Zuben headed into her office in Manhattan, while her colleagues Ryan Nolan and Jane Dunlevie were awaiting similar news in San Francisco.

For the trio — all top executives at Goldman Sachs, one of Wall Street's most prestigious firms — the news came via a phone call from David Solomon, Goldman's CEO.

Von Zuben was in the middle of a Zoom conference with colleagues when her call came in. Dunlevie was tending to her 6-year-old and making breakfast when her phone rang. And Nolan had just finished giving his infant daughter her bottle when his call came in at 6:51 a.m.

The ensuing few moments, each executive said, raced by like a blur. Briefly and succinctly, Solomon shared a message with each one: Congratulations. You've just made partner.

They were a few of the 60 calls that Solomon and Goldman President and Chief Operating Officer John Waldron split among themselves throughout the morning to break the news to the new inductees. 

"I was ecstatic," von Zuben told Business Insider about her reaction. "I tried to focus on my meeting as best I could" after that, she added, "but right after I got off, thankfully we were wrapping up pretty quickly." Then she started calling her mentors to tell them she'd made it.

Read more:Goldman Sachs just dropped the names of its 2020 partner class, and it's a big day for investment bankers in TMT

Among the people who von Zuben — Goldman's global head of client-portfolio solutions in alternative investments since 2018 — broke the news to first was Eric Lane, the bank's global cohead of the consumer and investment-management division and someone whom she considers a mentor.

"Eric hired me into the firm 13 years ago," von Zuben said. "He's supported me throughout my entire career." 

Making partner at Goldman is no small feat, especially because the total partnership is now fewer than 440 people, which is roughly 1% of Goldman's 40,000-person worldwide workforce. This year's class was the smallest since the firm went public in 1999, a person familiar with the size and makeup of the group said.

Since he took over from his predecessor Lloyd Blankfein, Solomon has sought to tighten the partner pool and prioritize membership for front-office rainmakers over back-office personnel doing operational work, like human resources.

But for those who clear the threshold, making partner comes with desirable perks, like a minimum annual base salary of $950,000 and access to a designated bonus pool.

Business Insider spoke with four of Goldman's newest partners about how it felt to have reached this career milestone and how they learned the news from Solomon.

'Congratulations, welcome to the partnership'

When Nick Pomponi, a cohead of global software investment banking, received the call from Solomon on Thursday morning, he knew it was someone from inside Goldman Sachs based on how it was identified on his phone: No Caller ID.

"I was downstairs with my wife and kids and the phone rang," he said. "So I quickly scooted upstairs and we had a quick chat."

"He said, 'Congratulations, welcome to the partnership,'" Pomponi said. "I think my wife was shooshing everybody, all my kids around the house."

For Pomponi, who is based in New York City and has advised clients including Ultimate Software and IBM, making partner is a recognition of the successes of Goldman's technology, media, and telecommunications investment-banking group. Indeed, of the 19 investment bankers elevated to partner status, seven came out of the TMT group.

Read more:Meet the 7 new partners in Goldman Sachs' elite TMT division, advising on high-profile tech IPOs and deals for clients like Snowflake, Shopify, and Netflix

On Friday, DoorDash released its filing to go public, with Goldman Sachs playing a leading role in advising on the initial public offering. The dating app Bumble is considering an IPO for 2021 and plans to have Goldman Sachs serve as a lead advisor, according to Bloomberg.

In September, Goldman was one of the lead advisors on the IPO of the data-storage unicorn Snowflake, whose debut was the largest-ever software IPO. The bank earned $34 million in underwriting fees, Business Insider previously reported.

Nolan, another cohead of global software investment banking, agreed about the significance of the TMT promotions.

"It is a testament to just how well the business and the team is doing," he told Business Insider. "I think it demonstrates that not only is tech growing massively and media telecom, for that matter ... but I think it also demonstrates that technology is permeating everything."

'Almost every female partner has already called me this morning'

All four executives described the feeling of making partner as an incomparable rush, and they underscored the responsibilities they feel to provide mentorship to younger employees and advance initiatives that the firm runs around diversity and inclusion.

For Goldman's new female partners, that feeling is palpable. Twenty-seven percent of the bank's 2020 partner class is made up of women. With the new class, women now make up 18% of the partnership. 

"I think almost every female partner has already called me this morning, and it's a group that takes incredibly seriously the mentorship and support of women in the pipeline," Dunlevie, a global cohead of internet investment banking within the TMT group, said. "We're hopeful and we know there's work still to be done."

Meanwhile, women have made strides across the finance industry this year, even though gender dynamics remain significantly skewed.

In 2020, Goldman Sachs elevated two top female executives — Stephanie Cohen, the chief strategy officer, and Kim Posnett, a senior executive in the investment-banking group — to cohead of the firm's merged wealth-management and consumer group and cohead of investment-banking services, respectively.

Outside Goldman, Jane Fraser, the top executive in consumer banking at Citigroup, was announced to be taking over Citi as CEO in February, making her the first woman to helm a major US bank.

But for von Zuben, being able to show her daughters, 8 and 11, that their mom has reached this zenith is a particular source of pride. She is a sponsor of the Launch with GS initiative, which supports the flow of capital to diverse entrepreneurs, and a member of the MD advisory board for Goldman's firmwide Hispanic network.

She recalled her 8-year-old daughter's reaction that day when she called her family to tell them the good news.

"My littlest daughter who was saying prayers for everything to go well today for me, which was very sweet, said, 'Are you sure? Did it really happen, Mommy?'" she said.

As she ended a day at the office that she is unlikely to forget, von Zuben headed home to her daughters to celebrate that the answer was yes.

SEE ALSO: Goldman Sachs just dropped the names of its 2020 partner class, and it's a big day for investment bankers in TMT

DON'T MISS: We mapped out the power structure at Goldman Sachs and identified the bank's 125 top execs. Here's our exclusive org chart.

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US coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continued to climb over the weekend. 

Meanwhile, DoorDash released its paperwork to go public on Friday, and Airbnb's S-1 is expected to drop this week. 

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In 2007, fresh out of Stanford University, Jane Dunlevie began her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, at the base of one of Wall Street's tallest mountains.

If breaking into the firm's exclusive partnership is considered the peak, then, 13 years after she first joined the firm, Dunlevie scaled its summit.

"We're obviously individually excited, but I think collectively incredibly proud of the achievements of the whole group," Dunlevie told Business Insider in an interview Thursday, a few hours after being elevated to partnership via a phone call direct from the bank's CEO David Solomon himself.

Dunlevie is a co-head of Goldman's global internet investment banking business within its technology, media, and telecommunications group, which produced seven out of the total 19 investment bankers who were elevated to partner in this year's class. At only 35 years old, Dunlevie's rise to the top has been fairly quick.

Read more:4 brand-new Goldman Sachs partners told us what it's like to get a call from CEO David Solomon inviting them to one of Wall Street's most exclusive groups

Overall, the 2020 partner class at Goldman consists of 60 executives worldwide.

Among the tech execs who were raised to partnership alongside Dunlevie on Thursday are three others whom she named as close colleagues — Ryan Nolan, a co-head of global software investment banking; Will Connolly, the head of the tech ECM business; and Mike Voris, head of convertibles and private placements.

Between the four of them, the clients they advise comprise a who's who of technology giants.

Dunlevie's clientele includes such firms as Shopify, Pinterest, and PayPal. The deals that she has worked on include public offerings for tech firms like Cloudflare — an IPO that valued the software security firm at more than $3 billion— and Pinterest, which reportedly valued the social media giant at more than $10 billion.

See more:Snowflake's mega IPO resulted in more than $100 million in fees for investment banks. Here's how much Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and 8 other banks each made.

Nolan, meanwhile, works with Hewlett-Packard and Netflix. And Connolly is responsible for Goldman Sachs' top-ranked tech IPO business, which has spawned such IPO juggernauts as this year's Snowflake IPO, the biggest-ever software public offering. And Voris has worked on deals for companies like Square and Snap.

"You think of somebody like Ryan Nolan — we've worked on teams for the same clients for many, many years. Will Connolly and I work on almost every IPO together. [And I have worked] with Mike Voris raising converts for tons and tons of our clients," she said, "so it's fun to see the collective efforts of people that you really respect and have worked with for a long time."

Before she became a power player herself, Dunlevie got to work with them firsthand

As a young banker, Dunlevie had access to top dealmakers drawing on Goldman's services.

"I did a bunch of IPO's as a relatively junior person in our business," she said. "In your mid-twenties, when you get to work on an IPO with a tech company, for me it seemed like the fastest way to get to be able to talk to CEOs and CFOs and get them to tell you everything about their business and their ambitions and how they ran the business, and then help them synthesize that for investors."

But Dunlevie's original foray into tech might be unsurprising given that she's the scion of a Silicon Valley superpower.

Indeed, she shares her last name — a platinum moniker in tech circles — with her father, Bruce Dunlevie. The elder Dunlevie cofounded Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark Capital in 1995, which went on to make successful early bets in eBay and Uber, among others.

Jane grew up in Northern California and never left, attending Stanford as an undergraduate and then for her business degree. A student of the innovation economy, she set out to forge her own identity by going into banking, not tech. She knew she wanted to work at Goldman during her first years at Stanford, she said Thursday.

"Look, I grew up here. I went to Stanford both times," she said. "And so you certainly catch the itch to be close to innovation. I do it in a finance seat, but it's hard not to be excited about it."

'It's been impossible to leave'

Outside of her pedigree, Dunlevie has set about forging an identity of her own in tech since she joined Goldman Sachs. "I wanted to work at Goldman as an undergraduate and I showed up here and have done really, really interesting things ever since," she said. "It's been impossible to leave."

Meanwhile, in spite of a tumultuous 2020, TMT deals at Goldman are still hot.

Just one day after Dunlevie's promotion to partner, the food delivery service DoorDash released its filing on Friday to go public, with Goldman Sachs playing a leading role in advising on the IPO. Meanwhile, dating app Bumble is reportedly considering an IPO in 2021, and plans to have Goldman Sachs also lead that, according to Bloomberg.

Goldman Sachs' entire investment-banking business ranks number one in mergers and acquisitions (307 deals) and bookrunning for equity capital markets (501 transactions), according to Dealogic. 

Now, as Dunlevie looks to the future, she also reflected on the people who, over more than a decade at the firm, have helped her define her past.

"I feel super grateful to all the people that have mentored me and helped me be successful here," she said, naming Goldman veterans Kim Posnett, global cohead of investment-banking services; Nick Giovanni, global head of TMT; and Sam Britton, head of M&A within the TMT group, as mentors who showed her the ropes at the start of her career.

As a partner, Dunlevie said she plans to continue mentoring the next generation of bankers — including women and diverse constituencies.

"We have such a young, talented group of people," Dunlevie said. "It's really fun to watch them thrive, and I'm excited to bring more and more diverse, amazing people through the system at Goldman."

SEE ALSO: 4 brand-new Goldman Sachs partners told us what it's like to get a call from CEO David Solomon inviting them to one of Wall Street's most exclusive groups

SEE ALSO: We mapped out the power structure at Goldman Sachs and identified the bank's 125 top execs. Here's our exclusive org chart.

SEE ALSO: Inside the rise of Ram Sundaram, the leader of a secretive Goldman Sachs desk that's minting billions by designing some of the bank's most imaginative — and controversial — trades

Join the conversation about this story »

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The upper echelons of one of Goldman Sachs' most prestigious businesses, its investment banking division, are about to undergo a big leadership transition.

Gregg Lemkau, co-head of the firm's investment banking division since 2017 and a member of Goldman's management committee, is departing the firm at the end of 2020. He will be succeeded by Jim Esposito, Goldman's global co-head of its global markets division, who will step into Lemkau's role on Jan. 1.

Goldman Sachs announced the news about Lemkau's departure in two internal memos sent to Goldman's worldwide workforce by CEO David Solomon on Monday.

"As co-head of IBD, Gregg has helped lead our efforts to continue to solidify and grow our preeminent investment banking franchise around the world," David Solomon, Goldman's CEO, wrote in a memo reviewed by Business Insider.

"During his more than 28-year tenure at the firm, he has advised on hundreds of transactions, and has spent significant time advising our clients across all sectors globally while working in our offices in the US and in Europe," Solomon added.

Lemkau is heading to Michael Dell-backed MSD Partners, where he will be CEO of an investment firm that manages more than $15 billion in assets, according to a separate statement from MSD Partners announcing the news.

Esposito is a 25-year Goldman veteran who first joined the firm in 1995 as a salesperson for emerging markets debt. He became an MD in 2002 and partner in 2006. As incoming co-head of investment banking, he will work alongside Dan Dees, Lemkau's current investment banking cohead, who will retain his role.

Lemkau — whose sister Kristin is a top Wall Street executive in her own right, running JPMorgan Chase's wealth division — has been at Goldman Sachs since 1992, when he started as an analyst in mergers and acquisitions, a group he eventually ran before becoming co-head of investment banking. He was named an MD at Goldman in 2001 and partner in 2002.

Read more:How JPMorgan's Kristin Lemkau is planning to turbocharge the firm's $500 billion wealth business, from a rebrand and ramping up advisor training to new tech

In his memo announcing Esposito's move, Solomon praised him as having "a deep understanding of our corporate and institutional clients."

"We look forward to benefiting from his significant expertise as we further grow our market share, expand our client footprint, and offer new solutions, with the goal of delivering the best of Goldman Sachs to our clients," Solomon added.

Lemkau's exit and Esposito's move to co-head the investment banking division means that Wall Street's top bank for mergers and acquisitions will be led by two people with experience in other areas.

Esposito, while the once chief operating officer of the division, has a lot of experience in raising debt and equity for clients, while Dees, who has run the division alongside Lemkau since 2018, came up through the technology business.

Goldman thinks so highly of the technology, media, and telecom business that it tapped seven new partners from that business in its latest round of promotions, or 37% of the 19 total investment bankers who got the promotion.

Read more:Meet the 7 new partners in Goldman Sachs' elite TMT division, advising on high-profile tech IPOs and deals for clients like Snowflake, Shopify, and Netflix

Lemkau's departure for MSD Partners shows that even for those near the top of Goldman Sachs, there are other areas of finance that promise larger paydays.

That's despite Solomon's attempts to make the partnership even more lucrative. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Goldman was going to give partners more carried interest in its private equity funds, and would lend $500 million in total to partners to help them leverage those returns.

Solomon has known about Lemkau's decision for some time, and the two men, who are close, spent some time a couple weekends ago talking it through, a person familiar with the conversation told Business Insider. 

Lemkau, the person said, has spent his entire career at Goldman and wanted to try something new. He and John Waldron, Solomon's lieutenant and a man in line to take over the CEO's role, are roughly the same age, leaving Lemkau with fewer options to move higher into Goldman's management ranks, the person said.

Here are the full memos that Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon sent to staff on Monday announcing the news of Gregg Lemkau's departure and Jim Esposito's promotion.

November 16, 2020

Gregg Lemkau to Retire From Goldman Sachs

Gregg Lemkau, co-head of the Investment Banking Division (IBD) and a member of the Management Committee, will retire from the firm at the end of the year.

As co-head of IBD, Gregg has helped lead our efforts to continue to solidify and grow our pre-eminent investment banking franchise around the world. During his more than 28-year tenure at the firm, he has advised on hundreds of transactions, and has spent significant time advising our clients across all sectors globally while working in our offices in the US and in Europe. The firm has benefitted greatly from Gregg's deep and expansive understanding of industries and markets, as well as his distinctive client service mindset.

Gregg has also been instrumental in supporting our commitment to driving sustainable inclusive economic growth, helping conceive of and implement our board diversity initiative.  He has partnered closely with our clients to improve their diversity representation pre-IPO, and through this critical work has underscored our firm's conviction in the importance of having diverse voices represented at the table, both in business and society more broadly.

In addition, Gregg has been a steward of the firm's culture of teamwork and excellence throughout his nearly three decades at Goldman Sachs, and has been a key developer of talent and a mentor to so many of our current and future leaders.  He has also sponsored a number of important programs to support our people, such as events organized by the Goldman Sachs Veterans Network and our Veterans Integration Program.  

Gregg has served with excellence since he joined us as an analyst in 1992 in Mergers & Acquisitions.  Prior to assuming his current role as co-head of IBD, Gregg was co-head of Global Mergers & Acquisitions.  He has also served as global co-head of the Technology, Media and Telecom Group, global co-head of the Healthcare Group and chief operating officer for the Investment Banking Division.  Gregg is a member of the IBD Executive Committee, and previously served as chairman of the Firmwide Commitments Committee from 2011 to 2015 and as a member of the Partnership Committee.  He was named managing director in 2001 and partner in 2002.

Please join me in thanking Gregg for his many contributions to the firm, our clients and our people, and in wishing him and his family the very best in the years ahead.

David M. Solomon

# # # # # # # # # # # # # #

November 16, 2020

Jim Esposito to Become Global Co-Head of the Investment Banking Division

I am pleased to announce that Jim Esposito will become global co-head of the Investment Banking Division, effective January 1. Ashok Varadhan and Marc Nachmann will continue to serve as global co-heads of the Global Markets Division.

In his new role, Jim will partner with Dan Dees, who has served as co-head of the division since 2018, to help lead our efforts to continue to grow our investment banking franchise across industries around the world.

Jim has 25 years of experience at Goldman Sachs, and a deep understanding of our corporate and institutional clients. We look forward to benefitting from his significant expertise as we further grow our market share, expand our client footprint and offer new solutions, with the goal of delivering the best of Goldman Sachs to our clients.

Jim currently serves as global co-head of the Global Markets Division. In this role, he has helped advance our efforts to deliver the full range of our FICC and Equities products to our clients, including by harnessing technology to provide more efficient market access and an enhanced client experience.

Prior to joining the Global Markets Division, Jim was a senior leader in Investment Banking, where he served as co-head of the Global Financing Group and chief operating officer of the division.  Jim joined Goldman Sachs in 1995 as a salesperson for Emerging Markets Debt and was named managing director in 2002 and partner in 2006.

Jim is a member of the Management Committee, European Management Committee, Firmwide Risk Committee and Global Markets Division ExecComm.

Please join me in congratulating Jim on his new role, and in wishing him, Dan and our Investment Banking teams continued success.

David M. Solomon

SEE ALSO: One of Goldman Sachs' youngest new partners is a 35-year-old Silicon Valley native who leads deals with clients like Shopify and Pinterest

SEE ALSO: How JPMorgan's Kristin Lemkau is planning to turbocharge the firm's $500 billion wealth business, from a rebrand and ramping up advisor training to new tech

SEE ALSO: We mapped out the power structure at Goldman Sachs and identified the bank's 125 top execs. Here's our exclusive org chart.

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NOW WATCH: Epidemiologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

The long-awaited Airbnb S-1 finally dropped last night. Here's a roundup of what you need to know:

• • Airbnb said in its IPO filing that its search results have been hurt by Google launching its own travel-comparison tools
  • Airbnb's three founders have put two unusual twists on their efforts to retain control after their company goes public
  • Airbnb just revealed it's under examination by the IRS, which is proposing the home-sharing giant pay more than $1.35 billion in back taxes

If you're not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here to get your daily dose of the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.

Like the newsletter? Hate the newsletter? Feel free to drop me a line at ddefrancesco@businessinsider.com or on Twitter @DanDeFrancesco. 

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At a Manhattan restaurant in the summer of 2018, four Goldman Sachs summer analysts gathered for a routine Friday night dinner. At the table were Zander Cowan, Arthur Jacobs, Aditi Sundaram, and Claire Thompson, who harbored big dreams of a career at one of Wall Street's most prestigious firms.

At the dinner, the four interns agreed that, if they were invited back to join Goldman as full-time analysts, they would partake in the firm's annual Analyst Impact Fund competition, a showdown where young employees have the chance to compete for grants reaching up to $250,000 to advance social causes and the missions of nonprofit organizations.

Two years after their intern dinner in New York City, the four former interns — all of whom have since been hired full-time into the firm — joined forces to compete for the Analyst Impact Fund and, last week, they won the top prize at the competition.

"I would say it's a pretty marquee part of Goldman Sachs culture," said Cowan, 23, who joined the firm in 2019 and is an analyst in strategic cross-asset solutions. "It's such a unique opportunity for analysts to find a cause they're passionate about," he told Business Insider in an interview.

Julian Salisbury, Goldman's global head of its merchant banking division, told Business Insider in an interview that, through the Fund, analysts are challenged to bring an "analytical approach" to their pitches, in order to "convince a senior audience that this is going to be a good return on their investment."

"The analysts help us seek out and find charities where by giving money, we would see the biggest return or the biggest impact of that money" through the fund, Salisbury added. Goldman's partnership committee — which Salisbury co-heads alongside Eric Lane, the firm's global cohead of its consumer and investment management division — sponsors the fund.

The Analyst Impact Fund is now in its fifth year, and its origin was the idea that Goldman analysts — who are "very passionate and skilled around financial analysis and investments," Salisbury said — could be deployed to identify philanthropic causes and develop a plan for how to put the grants, which come from the firm's capital, to work, to do good.

Last week, six teams of analysts virtually faced off to pitch to a panel of elite Goldman Sachs executives about their plans for how to disperse the capital. Three tiers of cash grants were up for grabs for analysts' respective causes: $250,000 for the winner, followed by $100,000 for the runner-up, and $75,000 for the team that placed in third. The other three teams received $25,000 grants for their causes. The winner was announced by Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon himself.

After their victory at the competition, Cowan, Jacobs, Sundaram, and Thompson told Business Insider what it took to pull off their success.

The winning analyst group competed on behalf of an organization that prevents unused medicines from going to waste

Analysts competed for a variety of causes. Among them, they competed on behalf of organizations that support Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs, and vaccination for infants in developing parts of the world like India.

Cowan, Jacobs, Sundaram, and Thompson competed and won the grand prize on behalf of Sirum, a US-based nonprofit group that seeks to save unused medicines and prevent them from going to waste.

Sirum is dedicated to solving a big problem. Medication non-adherence — that is, failure to take medications the way they were prescribed — results in 125,000 deaths per year in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What's more, people fail to take their medications as prescribed as much as 50% of the time, says the Food and Drug Administration on its website.

Representatives for Sirum did not respond to a Business Insider request for comment. But Jacobs, 23, a member of the winning analyst group, explained that portions of the grant will go toward applications like building out an SMS outreach system to help Sirum reach people in rural populations who need to dispense with their medication.

"There's a very high percentage of rural patients who are living in communities without necessarily high-speed Internet or direct access to certain resources" like pharmacies, said Jacobs, who is a merchant-banking analyst. He expressed confidence that an SMS messaging system would help to close that gap.

Salisbury said that raising money for organizations like these nonprofits has a genuine impact.

"These are typically smaller charities where the $250,000 first prize really makes a different to that organization," he said. "What we don't want to do is just be throwing sand on the beach of another large-scale organization."

Read more: From Goldman Sachs to JPMorgan, here's what you can make at all the bulge-bracket banks as a first-year IB analyst

People involved say that the Analyst Impact Fund teaches the analysts important lessons, while helping to do good

Those involved with the Analyst Impact Fund say that, in addition to creating a pipeline for capital to flow to organizations that could benefit from it to do more good work, it also teaches young analysts skills that help them thrive professionally.

"They all rise to the occasion in terms of the quality of their presentation," Salisbury said, adding that he is "sure it's a nerve-wracking experience for them."

But two of the analysts, speaking on behalf of the winning group, said that they're confident this victory on behalf of Sirum is the harbinger of continued philanthropic efforts to come.

"None of us ever entered the firm thinking philanthropy would not be a part of our lives," said Thompson, 23, who works at Goldman as a private-equity analyst.

Sundaram, 24, agreed. "I think having had this exposure so early in our careers just paves the way for us to continue philanthropic efforts," she said.

"If we could do it when we were 23, our philanthropic efforts will only scale as we grow older and have more influence in our communities and our workplaces."

Read more: We watched 15 Blackstone employees pitch charities to senior dealmakers to learn what it takes to impress the firm's top brass

SEE ALSO: A peek inside Goldman Sachs' internal idea factory that's hatched products like a LinkedIn for Wall Street. Here's what else it's trying to disrupt at the bank.

SEE ALSO: 4 brand-new Goldman Sachs partners told us what it's like to get a call from CEO David Solomon inviting them to one of Wall Street's most exclusive groups

SEE ALSO: From Goldman Sachs to JPMorgan, here's what you can make at all the bulge-bracket banks as a first-year IB analyst

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After previously vowing to hold off on layoffs during the pandemic, some of the biggest global banks have been reversing course and announcing job cuts.

When the pandemic first started to upend global markets and trigger furloughs and layoffs across industries earlier this year, millions of people suddenly found themselves out of work. But some bank executives reassured staff that they'd postpone their standard annual cuts and restructuring.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told Bloomberg TV in June that his firm had abstained from 2020 job cuts "because it hasn't been appropriate."

Read more:Here's who's most at risk once Wall Street kicks off the tidal wave of layoffs many banks had put on pause

And in August remarks, Noel Quinn, HSBC's CEO, said that "it would have been wrong to proceed with job losses at a time of significant stress for our people and communities" during the first few months of the pandemic, but that the bank had resumed cost-cutting as of the summer.

"Many countries have slowed the spread of the virus and are emerging from lockdown," he said, "and we have adapted to new ways of working."

"I therefore decided in June to lift the pause on redundancies," he added.

HSBC is not alone in pivoting back to cost-cutting. In recent months other firms have decided to once again proceed with cost-saving plans: Giants like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Wells Fargo have all moved forward with cuts. 

Business Insider is closely monitoring financial firms that are cutting jobs. Below, we've rounded up the latest announcements from top firms, and will continually update this list.

Have a tip on finance industry cost-cutting or job reductions on Wall Street? Contact this reporter confidentially at rhodkin@businessinsider.com, via the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758, or direct message on Twitter @reedalexander. 

SEE ALSO: We mapped out the top 350 Wall Street headhunters who are recruiting talent for trading, dealmaking, and investing jobs

SEE ALSO: Goldman Sachs' CFO explained why he's feeling more confident about plans to move employees to lower-cost hubs like Salt Lake City and Dallas

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HSBC

Europe's largest bank by assets has previously said it would cut as many as 35,000 jobs, and a spokesperson for HSBC confirmed that plan remains on track.

"We would expect our head count to decrease from the current level of 235,000 to be closer to 200,000" by 2022, the representative told Business Insider in an email.

These cuts were in the works since before the pandemic consumed much of the US and Western Europe. In February, HSBC first warned that they were coming, and by August, Noel Quinn, the firm's CEO, shed more light on the bank's shifting plans in remarks that were published in an HSBC report.

"We are moving forward with these plans wherever we can. We have already begun combining our wholesale back office operations, and brought our retail, wealth and private-banking businesses together in a single global business — Wealth and Professional Banking," he said. "Our US businesses has reduced its branch footprint, and Global Banking and Markets has made good early progress in reducing its risk-weighted assets."

Quinn noted in his remarks that he paused the job-culling efforts in March as "it would have been wrong to proceed with job losses at a time of significant stress for our people and communities, and at a point when we needed to protect our capacity to serve our customers."

But by late summer there was a shift back to restructuring. The executive explained that "we intend to accelerate implementation of the plans we announced in February," saying that HSBC would need to consider "additional actions ... in light of the new economic environment."

JPMorgan Chase

Last week, JPMorgan Chase initiated a small round of cuts in its consumer businesses group, a sector that covers consumer banking, home lending, and credit cards. 

Bloomberg first reported the cuts in September, noting that they included 80 jobs within the consumer group, "and dozens more across other lines of business."

A representative for JPMorgan Chase told Business Insider that the firm has given those individuals the chance to apply for other roles in the company. All of the employees were given at least a month's notice to decide if they wanted to reapply or depart altogether.

The cuts were not triggered by the coronavirus, the spokesperson said, but instead by other business considerations as it determines its "priorities for the year."

The consumer group has faced several cuts throughout 2020. In January, it was hit with several hundred losses, Bloomberg reported. 

Reuters previously reported that JPMorgan had cut roughly 100 jobs across the consumer banking, commercial banking, and corporate and investment banking divisions in July. 

Citigroup

In a statement to Business Insider, a spokesperson for Citigroup confirmed that the bank "is moving forward with a limited number of staffing reductions, impacting less than 1% of our colleagues globally." For context, Citigroup employs more than 200,000 people.

The spokesperson additionally noted that the cuts are spread across regions, businesses, and functions, as opposed to impacting front- or back-office workers exclusively. 

But, the spokesperson added, the firm has also invested in hiring efforts throughout the year too, employing more than 26,000 people during the course of 2020. One-third of those individuals, the bank said, are in the US.

"We expect the overall size of our firm to remain about the same when the impact of these changes, natural attrition and ongoing hiring since the start of the year are all taken into account," Citi said in its statement.

A Citigroup representative told Business Insider that the company had not previously committed to a total moratorium on job cuts through 2020, even though Reuters previously reported in March that Citi's CEO Michael Corbat "ordered a suspension of any planned staff cuts," citing "a person familiar with the matter."

Now, as the cuts are being implemented, the bank said that "we will do our best to support each person, including offering the ability to apply for open roles in other parts of the firm and providing severance packages."

Bloomberg first reported in September that Citi would implement its job-cutting plans.

Wells Fargo

A spokesperson for Wells Fargo confirmed in a statement to Business Insider that the bank is moving forward with restructuring and job-cutting plans across "nearly all of our business lines and functions" in "most geographies."

"We are the beginning of a multiyear effort to build a stronger, more efficient company for our customers, employees, communities, and shareholders," the statement said. "The work will consist of a broad range of actions, including workforce reductions, to bring our expenses more in line with our peers and create a company that is more nimble, streamlined, and customer-focused."

The statement also noted that Wells Fargo put a pause on job cuts in March and "through the initial months of the pandemic," but that the bank decided to forge ahead with the reductions in August. The spokesperson said that the firm does not have a target for how many jobs could be culled.

Bloomberg first reported in October that 700 jobs are reportedly being slashed in the bank's commercial banking group — a unit which generally works with corporate clients that produce annual sales ranging from $5 million up to $2 billion, the bank has previously explained.

As many as 50,000 to 66,000 jobs could be slashed at Wells Fargo in 2020 and 2021, according to Pensions & Investments, which reported in September that the bank had begun notifying layoffs in August that their jobs would conclude in October. 

In the extreme case that as many as 66,000 people would ultimately be laid off, that would equate to nearly 25% of the firm's 266,000 employee-strong workforce, Pensions & Investments reported, citing unnamed sources.

Read more: Wells Fargo execs are setting their sights on $10 billion in cost-cuts, putting layoffs and branch closures on the table. Here's how it could play out.

Deutsche Bank

In September, Philipp Gossow, an executive who oversees Deutsche Bank's retail branches in Germany, told Reuters that his firm planned to shut down 100 physical branches in the country — equating to one-fifth of its consumer banking presence in Germany. 

In 2019, the German bank had said it would cut as many as 18,000 jobs in order to streamline its operations, but a source with knowledge of the situation told Business Insider that those job cuts will be primarily be in the consumer banking space, and, going forward, likely will not affect Deutsche's front-office or investment-banking professionals. 

In the US, the source said, Deutsche has no plans for future cuts or restructuring at this time. 

Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon previously said that job-cutting plans were out for 2020, but the firm has reversed course in the fourth quarter of the year, bringing back some cuts.

A source familiar with the matter told Business Insider that Goldman has initiated a second round of job cuts this week following a larger round it previously undertook in September. Both rounds were first reported by Bloomberg.

The first round of cuts at Goldman this year resulted in roughly 400 cuts, or about 1% of Goldman's global workforce, Bloomberg reported in September.

"At the outbreak of the pandemic, the firm announced that it would suspend any job reductions," a spokesperson for Goldman Sachs told Business Insider in an emailed statement in October. "The firm has made a decision to move forward with a modest number of layoffs."

The round currently underway this week will result in cuts affecting less than 1% of the workforce, spread across different divisions and regions where the firm operations, the source familiar said.

Cantor Fitzgerald

Fifty-five employees will be laid off by Cantor Fitzgerald Securities by the end of the year, according to an updated WARN notice posted on the New York State Department of Labor's website.

The notice was first posted in June, and initially pegged the number of impacted employees at 76.

The company did not immediately respond to a Business Insider request for comment, nor did it specify which divisions will be affected by the layoffs, but the WARN notice says that the company is relocating some of its business "to an out-of-state location."

Under the WARN Act, employers need to give their employees 60-day notice when closing a facility that will lead to at least 50 employees being laid off, with the caveat that said employees work more than 20 hours a week and have been employed with the company for more than six months.

Cantor Fitzgerald first announced that cuts were coming in April, when Bloomberg reported that it planned to "cut hundreds of jobs across divisions." Its decision was in stark contrast to other Wall Street firms which had committed to deferring layoffs during the early days of the pandemic. 

Bloomberg noted that "senior leaders" at Newmark Knight Frank, a commercial real estate firm which is owned by Cantor Fitzgerald, were also being "asked to take pay cuts and eliminate positions," according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity.