Goldman Sachs has signalled a break from its past as an opaque trading house, with a new chief financial officer promising unprecedented transparency to shareholders and a review of each business line by next spring.
Stephen Scherr, who started as CFO on Monday, told an investor conference that the new management team — struggling with a depressed fixed income business, an underperforming share price and an ominous legal threat from Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal— would scrutinise the capital it allocates to each division.
“We’re looking at . . . what is the revenue potential for these businesses and against that looking at what the expense base is . . . and then coming to an assessment very clinically on whether that business is meeting its cost of capital,” he said.