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Goldman Sachs plans to appoint Tom Montag, a former partner in the Wall Street company’s trading arm and until recently a Bank of America executive, to its board of directors, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Monday’s forthcoming appointment would bring more trading and risk management expertise to Goldman’s board, which in recent years has added new members with distinguished careers in American corporations but limited Wall Street experience, including the former Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson and Jessica Uhl former Chief Financial Officer of Shell.
According to one person familiar with their mindset, chairman and CEO David Solomon and his fellow board members have been trying to bridge the risk management skills gap.
Goldman declined to comment, while Montag was not immediately available for comment. News of Montag’s possible appointment was previously reported by Bloomberg.
Adding a former Goldman heavyweight with deep roots in his trading business to the board would come amid internal disagreements over Solomon’s leadership of the bank. Complaints centered on a failed private banking expansion and lower bonuses for 2022, as well as long-standing grumblings about Solomon’s hobby as a DJ and Goldman’s decision early in his tenure to buy two private planes.
After falling nearly 50 percent in 2022, Goldman’s net earnings have fallen further in 2023 due to a lack of investment banking fees and a slowdown in trading. Solomon is trying to expand in wealth and wealth management so Goldman is less dependent on volatile investment banking and trading businesses, but it doesn’t currently have the same balance sheet as longtime rival Morgan Stanley.
Montag spent 22 years at Goldman, where he rose to become co-head of the strong sales and trading business and a member of the management committee. He has been one of Goldman’s exclusive partners since 1994.
He joined Merrill Lynch in 2008 just prior to the company’s sale to BofA during the financial crisis. He gradually took on more responsibility at BofA, rose to Chief Operating Officer and was seen as a potential successor to CEO Brian Moynihan.
Montag finally withdrew from BofA in 2021. In 2022 he became Managing Director of Rubicon Carbon, a carbon offset software platform backed by private investment group TPG.
Additional reporting by Stephen Gandel in New York