Free What Happened to Goldman Sachs: An Insider's Story of Organizational Drift and Its Unintended Consequences by Steven G. Mandis

Goldman’s M&A department in London in the early 1980s. He imported hard-nosed US investment banking techniques into what had been a conservative and traditional M&A environment in London. Thornton helped drive Goldman’s growth into Europe and Asia and was the first non-Chinese full professor at Tsinghua since the Communist revolution. He is chairman of the board of the Brookings Institution and co-chairman of Barrick Gold. Thornton graduated from Harvard College, where he played tennis. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in jurisprudence from Oxford University and a master’s degree in public and private management from the Yale School of Management.

Appendix G
    Goldman Timeline of Selected Events
    Following is a timeline summarizing selected key events for Goldman and its industry. Although the timeline covers events starting in 1869, the book starts its analysis from 1979, when the business principles were codified. The timeline goes through most of 2012. In order to help demonstrate that pressures started impacting the firm before its IPO in 1999 and before Blankfein took over as CEO, the events are categorized in terms of the analytical framework used for the analysis in the book. 1
    As discussed in appendix B , the framework categorizes four main pressures (or responses to those pressures) that impact an organization: organizational (O), regulatory (R), technological (T), and competitive (C). Although many events may apply or occur in response to multiple pressures, for simplicity in this timeline I use “O,” “R,” “T,” or “C” to indicate what I believe was the primary set of factors at work. It is challenging to precisely characterize each event. Also, I may inadvertently have missed selected events.
    1869: Marcus Goldman moves to New York and starts selling promissory notes (early commercial paper) from a one-room office on Pine Street.
    1882: Samuel Sachs, Goldman’s son-in-law, joins the business.
    1885: The firm becomes a general partnership, Goldman Sachs & Company.
    1896: The company joins the New York Stock Exchange.
    1900: Goldman’s first branch office opens in Chicago.
    1904: The firm’s capital reaches $1 million.
    1906: Goldman co-manages its first IPO for one of its clients, United Cigar Manufacturers. The same year, Goldman handles the initial equity sales for Sears, Roebuck, pioneering the IPO business.
    1907: Walter Sachs (grandson of Marcus Goldman) joins the firm as a commercial paper salesman. Sidney Weinberg is hired as assistant janitor.
    1909: Marcus Goldman dies, and Henry Goldman leads the firm.
    1910: Goldman now has a few partners, all members of the Goldman or Sachs families.
    1917: Henry Goldman’s pro-German stance causes a rift between the Goldman and Sachs families. Henry Goldman retires and withdraws his capital. Sidney Weinberg leaves to serve in the US Navy during World War I.
    1920: Sidney Weinberg returns to Goldman as a bond trader.
    1925: Weinberg buys a seat on the NYSE with money from his own earnings, not from trading.
    1927: Weinberg becomes only the second partner from outside the Goldman and Sachs families.
    1929: Waddill Catchings, who joined the firm eleven years earlier to head up underwriting, holds the largest single percentage in the partnership and takes over leadership. He pushes for the creation of Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, a collection of highly leveraged investment trusts. When the stock market collapses, Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation suffers heavy losses, and Goldman’s reputation is severely damaged.
    1930: After devastating trading losses, Catchings is forced to resign. The Sachs brothers name Sidney Weinberg senior partner. Weinberg takes over leadership of Goldman and builds its investment banking operation. The Sachs family covers the partners’ losses. Goldman will not reenter the asset management business again for nearly forty years.
    1933: Weinberg organizes the Business and Advisory Council for President