We’ve barely worked out who’s who – and who’s still standing – in the `old’ establishment, and Vanity Fair magazine is already telling us about the movers and shakers in the `new establishment’.
And, surprise surprise, the most influential person in the magazine’s second annual ranking of the top 100 power players in the information age — published this week — is none other than Goldman Sachs chief, Lloyd Blankfein. Interestingly, Blankfein moved up to first place in VF’s rankings this year, from No. 20 last year.
He also trumped Apple’s Steve Jobs, who came in second place in the Top 100 list; Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (No 3); Warren Buffett (No 4); and the Google triumvirate (Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who collectively gained fifth place).
It’s doubtful, however, that the low-key Blankfein is distributing October issues of Vanity Fair around the GS office, having urged Goldman employees in early August, according to the New York Post, to keep a low profile to curb negative publicity over Goldman’s outsize bonus payments and many, many other issues.
Meanwhile, notable omissions on this year’s VF list, as the Telegraph notes, included US hedge fund manager John Paulson (“in spite of his recent savvy bet on Bank of America’s shares”); KKR’s Henry Kravis and Lazard’s Bruce Wasserstein. Despite the list’s “paucity of Brits”, it adds, Sony boss Sir Howard Stringer does make an appearance, at number 51, credited with a 70 per cent increase in the electronic giant’s shares.
Newcomers included Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, as well as CNBC anchors Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett.
Here, below, is the Blankfein entry. And if you enjoy reading the whole list, you might also like VF’s web special (here) on the 14 inductees to its “2009 New Establishment Hall of Fame” as well as the first 18 inductees who the magazine claims “changed the game”:
No. 1
Goldman Sachs
LAST YEAR: 20.
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: It’s hard to imagine a financial institution that has weathered the economic crisis as well as Goldman Sachs has. Wall Street’s most watched and talked-about erstwhile investment bank took just seven months to shake the government off its back—it repaid its tarp funds ($10 billion) in June—and return to doing what it does best: making money. Goldman’s second-quarter net income of $3.4 billion shocked even the most cynical observers, of which there were many, thanks to the firm’s insidious tentacles, which stretch from Wall Street to Washington. Nevertheless, as several of the Goldman chief’s contemporaries have seen their careers come to ignominious ends in the past 18 months—Lehman Brothers’ Dick Fuld, Bear Stearns’s Jimmy Cayne, Merrill Lynch’s Stanley O’Neal—Blankfein’s grip on power at his own firm has only gotten tighter.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS: Blankfein, 55, is the son of a Brooklyn postal worker.
BIG COOL FRIEND: Warren Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha stepped into the breach with an injection of $5 billion into Goldman in October 2008 in exchange for preferred shares that pay a 10 percent annual dividend.
NEMESIS: Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, who gathered every single conspiracy theory that has ever been uttered about Goldman into a July barn burner called “The Great American Bubble Machine,” in which he described the bank as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”
QUESTIONABLE-TASTE ALERT: Just days before reports surfaced in The New York Post of Blankfein calling for his bankers to put an end to conspicuous consumption and lay low, his wife, Laura, reportedly made a fuss in the Hamptons after she and another Goldman Sachs wife were asked to wait in line with other ticket holders before the doors opened for Super Saturday, a charity event for ovarian cancer.
SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF: In 2008, the firm earned $2.3 billion and paid a mere $14 million in taxes, an effective tax rate of 1 percent, the result of what Goldman calls “changes in geographic earnings mix.” Critics say this could be offshore tax havens, a charge that Goldman denies.
THE HITS KEEP COMING: Goldman faced another round of criticism in late August after The Wall Street Journal revealed that the bank’s analysts supply stock tips to their biggest spending clients, leaving their smaller investors in the dark.
ON THE RECORD: “We regret that we participated in the market euphoria and failed to raise a responsible voice.”
Related links:
Goldman’s Smallville bonus mandate – FT Alphaville
Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein tops Vanity Fair power list – Daily Telegraph
“Goldman Sachs is not a giant vampire squid” - FT Alphaville