Goldman Sachs slashes CEO's pay by 30% after bank's poor performance

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive, David M Solomon saw his 2022 pay slashed by nearly 30 per cent, following missteps that have weighed on the elite Wall Street bank's profits and performance, the New York Times reported.

Solomon took home $25 million last year, the bank said in a filing Friday, down from $35 million a year earlier.

Although that paycheck was still hefty compensation by most standards, Solomon ceded his title as the highest-paid bank chief executive to Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, whose pay for 2022 was $35 million, the newspaper reported.

The salary cut followed an ugly period for Goldman and Solomon. The bank has admitted to billions in losses from its experiment in consumer banking, and is retrenching from big plans to build checking accounts and other products for modest borrowers, the New York Times said. Solomon's brusque style, meanwhile, has produced grumblings inside the firm and contributed to a string of senior departures, the daily newspaper said.

This month, the firm laid off 3,200 employees, the heaviest such job cuts since the financial crisis of 2008.

Goldman's board nodded to their disappointment in the filing on Friday, saying Solomon's pay cut reflected "the firm's 2022 performance, both on an absolute basis and relative to peer results."

The bank's chief executive since 2018, Solomon saw his pay docked in 2020 after Goldman admitted criminal wrongdoing for abetting the looting of Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund, NYT said.

Solomon's pay cut also puts him behind Bank of America's chief executive, Brian Moynihan, who earned $32 million, and James Gorman of Morgan Stanley, who earned $31 million, according to filings. At Wall Street banks, the compensation of top executives can swing from year to year based on their company's performance, the New York Times said.

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