Another day, another leaked passage from Greg Smith's forthcoming Why I Left Goldman Sachs, and another issuance from 200 West St. on the credibility of Mr. Smith's claims.
At Bloomberg Television, Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle followed yesterday's reporting on the results of Goldman's internal investigations (bankers like Jim Henson!), with an interview today with Edith Cooper, global head of human capital management at the firm.On her initial reaction to Mr. Smith's New York Times op-ed: Quite frankly, I had not experienced someone resigning to The New York Times. My first reaction was, who is he and what was his experience? Let's figure that out. What is it, where does he work…to really understand Greg Smith's story.
Her first response: We spoke to his managers. We looked at his reviews. And then we went into a much more exhaustive analysis of all of the different avenues, whether that is compliance or outside third parties that we have in place that our employees could call. It was very difficult for us to believe that an individual could have been in a position where he was so concerned that he would not have expressed it. Our culture is about communication.
On the results of her fact-finding: We focus on the things that we can control and the things we can control are how we can interact with our people. My biggest disappointment is that Greg Smith did not come forward and speak with us. That is our biggest disappointment. Then of course, as we looked into his claims, I was very pleased to see that here there was no merit to those claims.
Meanwhile, from Deal Journal yesterday:
Mr. Smith tells of one near-encounter when he saw Mr. Blankfein, sans clothes, after taking a shower at the gym. Mr. Blankfein was “air-drying,” Mr. Smith writes, something Mr. Smith took not as a display of power but as something men of an older generation tend to do
Which is to say: We're still looking forward to getting out hands on a copy.