View / Solomon leaves Waldron with a clean slate

Lloyd Blankfein, contemplating his exit from Goldman Sachs, liked to say that when things are bad, you can’t leave, and when things are good, you don’t want to. Blankfein was finally having fun, after a decade as CEO, when he started laying the groundwork for his exit in 2017.

That’s where David Solomon will be in 2028, which The Wall Street Journal reports is the loose timeframe for him handing the reins to his longtime lieutenant, John Waldron. There’s little drama here: Waldron has followed a step behind Solomon since the 1990s, from Bear Stearns to Goldman and then up through its banking arm, and has had the heir apparent title to himself for Solomon’s entire run — something no incoming Goldman CEO in Goldman’s history can say. (He also turned down $500 million and a write-your-own-ticket offer from Apollo when it tried to scoop him up in 2024, not something one does without assurances.)

Goldman has a history of chewing through CEOs-in-waiting. Neither John Thain nor John Thornton succeeded Hank Paulson. Gary Cohn tired of life as Prince Charles under Blankfein. Waldron will get the prize, and good timing, benefitting from Solomon’s stabilizing march but inheriting none of the baggage of his early tenure.

Solomon had the Jack Welch-ian temperament to remake Goldman and, early on, the room to do it. He spent that capital on a disastrous foray into consumer banking — started before he became CEO but expanded on his watch — then spent his middle years putting down the resulting internal mutiny and mending fences with regulators. Goldman today looks like a more profitable, organized, and top-down version of its pre-2008 self. And its stock price, which is a decent proxy for the resting pulse inside 200 West Street, has quadrupled since he took the job.

Unless he strikes the big deal that plenty of people, myself included, have long assumed he wants, Solomon will be remembered as a stabilizing, corporatizing leader of Wall Street’s premier institution. The transformation, if it comes, will be Waldron’s. The 56-year-old has staked out ground on AI and China, the two forces likely to define his tenure, and is a dealmaker at heart. Solomon leaves him with a clean slate.