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Goldman Sachs announced a leadership reshuffle this week that created a new layer of management for its all-important investment bank.
Goldman tapped three of its most senior dealmakers — who have personally handled transactions for the likes of Twitter, Uber, and United Airlines — to jointly oversee its investment banking unit: Kim Posnett, who has run tech banking; Matt McClure, who's led industrials coverage; and Anthony Gutman, who has been running investment banking services in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They will sit under the heads of Goldman's global banking and markets unit, Dan Dees and Ashok Varadhan, and be responsible for the bank's M&A advice to corporate clients.
It's a big role and signals a new generation of leaders atop Goldman's marquis business. Goldman has been No. 1 in M&A advice for most of the last 20 years, including in 2024 when it nabbed 30% of the more than $3 trillion in M&A volume around the world, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group.
The reshuffle comes as Wall Street generally braces for a thawing in mergers and public issuances as a new presidential administration gets underway. Last week, Goldman reported a more than 100% increase in profits amid an upswing in dealmaking activity.
It also comes as the bank prepares for at least another five years of leadership under CEO David Solomon and John Waldron, Goldman Sachs' president and COO. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Goldman's top officials, including Solomon, had been seeking ways to "signal to a younger generation of partners they are still climbing the ranks."
"This group of leaders represents the very best of our culture of excellence, client service and teamwork," Solomon said in announcing the news. "They have made outstanding contributions throughout their careers to our client franchise, operations and market-leading positions across our business."
Here's a look at the three new co-heads of investment banking — their careers, their accomplishments, and some of the clients they've advised.
Goldman Sachs
Posnett has emerged as one of Goldman's brightest stars. Most recently, she served as global head of technology, media, and telecommunications banking, essentially running a unit responsible for advising some of the nation's top tech companies, including Amazon, Uber, Etsy, and eBay.
She was previously head of the firm's crucial One Goldman Sachs initiative. She also ran the IB services unit — an internal sales force for the investment bank aimed at boosting business opportunities and developing custom banking solutions for clients. She joined Goldman in 2005 and was named a partner in 2016.
In 2024, Posnett told BI that she doesn't buy into the concept of a star banker who wins all the business and dominates face-time with clients.
"For the firm to win, it's mission-critical that clients are comfortable with not just any one person but the entire coverage team," she said, adding that the bank will send as many as 10 bankers to meet with a prospective client. "Because if they're just comfortable with one individual, that's not really scalable, and that creates risk across generations."
Selected transactions:
Goldman Sachs
McClure has made his name as a banker to Goldman's industrial sector clients. During the pandemic years, for example, he crafted a variety of innovative structures to secure funds for companies that needed extra capital to get through a tough period in the travel industry.
As BI reported in 2020, McClure helped Goldman underwrite $120 billion across 85 debt financings for clients in the struggling transportation sector, including Delta, United Airlines, and Norwegian Cruise Line.
McClure helped United deploy what he characterized at the time as a "first-of-its-kind" transaction to raise nearly $7 billion in debt by leveraging the airline's frequent flyer program. Traveler rewards programs were previously an untapped source of liquidity, McClure told BI at the time.
"The way I would think about it is that you're extracting value from that asset class that perhaps wasn't being fully appreciated by the market," he said.
McClure joined Goldman Sachs in 1999 and was named a partner in 2010. Business Insider included McClure on a list of top investment bankers for 2019 based on total merger volume. McClure ranked fourth, having completed more than $101 billion worth of M&A transactions that year, according to data from MergerLinks.
Selected transactions:
Gutman has headed up the Europe, Middle East, and Africa investment-banking divisions at Goldman and previously ran investment banking and IB services for Goldman in the United Kingdom.
He joined the firm in 2007 as a managing director and was elevated to the partnership in 2012. Before that, he worked at Citigroup. He was named co-head of UK investment banking alongside another senior partner, Mark Sorrell, in 2011, according to the publication Financial News. Previously at Goldman, he had served as co-COO of UK investment banking alongside Sorrell, and they were both promoted at the same time.
At Citi, Gutman was a managing director and head of hotels and leisure M&A, per FN.
Reed Alexander is a correspondent at Business Insider. He can be reached via email at [email protected], or SMS/the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758.
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When I left Australia to continue teaching overseas, I was told that my beliefs about education would be tested. Ten years later, after teaching in several countries, I couldn't agree more.
When I was in the Australian system, teachings about health and relationships were excellent, and science and literacy were brilliantly paired. However, the curriculum poorly represented Indigenous Australian peoples and their history.
I then found the British educational curriculum to be incredibly thorough. Grammar, maths, and history lessons are in-depth and, for the most part, pretty interesting. However, the curriculum is so packed that it places unrealistic expectations on both staff and students. I found it to be incredibly stressful.
In stark contrast, after moving to Switzerland, I taught at a Swedish international school. The Swedish system only focuses on "academic" skills like reading and writing after the age of 7. It took me time to adjust, but I quickly came to see that there is a very good reason for this approach: It frees up time for young children to really learn about themselves and the world they live in.
After all, it's not academic knowledge that is most beneficial to our children; this can be learned at any time in life. But it's crucial to learn soft skills at an early age.
From all my teaching experiences, I believe these three life skills are the most important.
Our children live in a world of extremely influential social media, frantic news coverage, and AI-generated content. Children need to be taught how to navigate opinionated information, questioning who is creating the content and what purpose it serves.
Encouraging critical thinking also means giving our children the space and tools to listen, discuss, and respectfully defend their individual opinions — and, importantly, be open to changing their viewpoints based on new evidence.
I've had many philosophical discussions with people, only to get up from the carpet and be reminded that my conversation partners were 4 years old. Children are deep thinkers, and we can choose to squash their beliefs or encourage them to develop a stronger understanding of themselves and others.
Comprehending what's going on in our bodies and brains has a huge impact on how we treat ourselves and the people around us.
Children need to be taught to listen to their own body signals (such as clenched muscles when feeling stressed) and emotional signals (such as feeling irritable when tired).
When they are able to identify what's happening, they can make informed choices about what they need — such as slow breathing, resting, or seeking support.
That said, not all stress is bad. We tell children that learning is fun, and often it is, but it's also challenging because our brains are forming new cognitive pathways. Helping children develop a growth mindset is vital. When people have a growth mindset, they understand that what they can't do yet, they will be able to do with time and persistence. They're also better equipped to solve problems that come their way.
When we think of creativity, we often automatically think of the arts, but this skill includes any type of problem-solving — from choosing an appropriate mathematical equation to resolving a conflict with a friend.
Creativity is nurtured through space and time to think, test ideas, learn from the results, and then choose the next steps. It is open-ended and often self-led. It's not a coincidence that these are also the skills involved in entrepreneurial projects — from launching a successful business to solving problems in the community.
The soft skills, like creativity, we teach our children will continue to influence them throughout their lives.
After 10 years of teaching, I saw that I could impact children's learning differently, so I transitioned to children's illustration.
Now, I use my educator background to make accessible art with meaningful messages, helping kids to process their emotions, connect with others, and act with kindness. By immersing our children in important messages and targeted teaching, we can help them to internalize the skills and understandings that will enable them to thrive in any context.
Rita Jane taught in elementary schools for 10 years. She is now a children's illustrator based in Paphos, Cyprus. Connect on LinkedIn, and find her illustrations on Instagram.
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The head of a major union of federal employees says he doesn't think Elon Musk understands who federal workers are or what they do.
"I don't think he knows the first thing about federal government," Randy Erwin, the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, told Business Insider in an interview.
"Frankly, I don't think he cares," he added.
Erwin spoke to BI after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday mandating that federal government employees return to the office.
It gave effect to an idea long championed by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk, appointed to head up the new enterprise, laid out a vision of an RTO mandate for federal workers in November.
In a joint Wall Street Journal op-ed with Vivek Ramaswamy, who has since exited DOGE, the pair outlined their plans to cut costs and downsize the federal government.
"Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome," they wrote.
"If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home."
On Tuesday, Musk wrote on X, the platform he owns, that "pretending to work while taking money from taxpayers is no longer acceptable."
In another post, he said the executive order was about "fairness."
He wrote: "It's not fair that most people have to come to work to build products or provide services while Federal Government employees get to stay home"
Erwin said the image of the work-shy civil servant was untrue.
"There's this myth that federal workers aren't coming to work," Erwin said, describing the talking point as "a bunch of political BS."
A report by the Office of Management and Budget last August said that most of the 2.3 million civilian workers employed by the federal government already work in person, with 54% on-site and 10% fully remote.
Erwin said he believes Musk views federal workers as "innovation-blocking bureaucrats."
"I've got 110,000 members, not a single one would fit that description," he said. "They're out there, spread across the country, providing valuable services to the American people."
"I don't think he [Musk] knows the first thing about the federal workforce, who they are, where they are, and the valuable services that they provide," Erwin added.
Erwin was joined by another union leader in condemning the RTO mandate — Everett Kelley, who leads AFGE, the largest federal employee's union of some 800,000 members.
In a statement, he described remote work as "a critical tool for federal agencies to maintain continuity of operations in emergencies, increase disaster preparedness, and improve efficiency."
Erwin told BI that home-working was part of the appeal of government jobs, which typically pay less than private-sector ones. Without it, it would be harder to retain talent, he said.
"When you can't make anywhere near what you could be making in the private sector, some family, flexible work policies become a very, very important thing," he said.
