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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

Topics

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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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