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Greg Smith, the London-based South African banker who publicly resigned
from Goldman Sachs this week, has been described as a remarkable man
with high principles by his old school teacher.
This week Smith hit the news after publishing his open resignation letter in
the New York Times, calling the Wall Street bank morally bankrupt.
Johannesburg-born Smith, who resigned as executive director and head of
the firms US equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and
Africa, had worked for Goldman Sachs for 12 years, starting as a summer
intern. He joined the banks UK offices a year ago. In his letter Smith
claimed, The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of
college that I can no longer in good conscience say I identify with what it
stands for.
And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive
as I have ever seen it, he said. I am sad to say that I look around today and
see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm
for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.
The Stanford University economics graduate blamed the banks decline in
moral fibre on its president Gary D Cohn and chief executive officer Lloyd C
Blankfein. He believed this loss was the banks single most serious threat
to its long-run survival.
It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over
the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their
own clients as muppets, sometimes over internal e-mail. The bank, whose
client list ranges from governments to major international companies, was
quick to deny the accusations levelled by Smith, saying they were
disappointed by his assertions.
Smiths letter has attracted a great deal of public comment, many
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South African Goldman Sachs mans damning exit letter
This week Johannesburg-born Smith hit the news after publishing his open resignation letter in the NewYork Times, calling the Wall Street bank morally bankrupt.
By Dan Swinhoe on 15 March, 2012 4:44 pm in Business News, Featured, News / no comments / EDIT
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questioning why it took him so long to come to this realisation. But his
former King David High School teacher has come to his defence.
He was a remarkable young man, exceptionally intelligent with an integrity
that is probably unequalled, Elliot Wolf, a retired headmaster said in an
interview with Reuters. Wolf taught for 34 years at the private Jewish school
Smith attended in Johannesburg before winning a scholarship to Stanford
University in the United States.
Wolf called the banker An absolutely remarkable man with high
principles. That was already part of his character when he was very, very
young.
Rainer Sztab, chair of the Guateng Maccabi Table Tennis Club, where
Smith played in South Africa as a teenager in the 1990s, remembered him
as an outstanding kid.
He was a stand-up kid, he always did what was right, Sztab told Reuters,
saying Smith twice played for the South African Maccabi team at the
Maccabiah Games in Israel, as a junior in 1993 and as a senior in 1997.
In his letter, Smith named his proudest moments in life as: Getting a full
scholarship to Stanford, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national
finalist, and winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah
Games, known as the Jewish Olympics.
He said these achievements had all come through hard work, with no
shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and
not enough about achievement. It just doesnt feel right to me anymore.
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