Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has dialed back his DJing hobby following a flurry of criticism that his controversial side gig is distracting to the investment bank’s business, people familiar with his decision told the Financial Times.
Solomon, known on dance club stages as DJ D-Sol, made the decision to stop spinning records at high-profile events about a year ago after it generated unwanted media attention that correlated Goldman’s pitfalls to its boss’s hobby, the people told FT.
The 61-year-old financier has been spinning records since 2015 — three years before he was named top dog at Goldman.
However, it wasn’t until he stepped into the CEO position that his hobby drew criticism from insiders who had a hard time believing Solomon could diversify Goldman’s business away from investment banking and trading by day while spinning discs at parties by night.
It was in 2019 that his DJing attracted unwanted scrutiny from the investment bank’s board — which Solomon chairs — who weren’t thrilled with his decision to join the lineup at Tomorrowland, FT earlier reported, as the decadent European dance-music festival is known for its undulating throngs of naked, sweaty, drug-fueled revelers.
In August 2020, Solomon apologized to the bank’s board of directors for spinning electronic dance records at a Hamptons party at the height of the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
However, that same summer he DJed as the opener for electronic duo The Chainsmokers at a Hamptons charity benefit.
Come 2021, DJ D-Sol landed a gig at the BottleRock music festival in Napa Valley, and mixed beats for last year’s Lollapalooza festival.
Solomon hasn’t DJ’d a high-profile event since Lollapalooza, which was arguably his biggest DJ opportunity to date.
Meanwhile, as Solomon has been climbing the ranks of disk jockey stardom, Goldman hasn’t been so lucky.
The bank on Tuesday reported a 33% profit drop in the most recent quarter, weighed down by the bank’s $3 billion loss on its consumer-baking ventures over the past three years, as well as a $506 million writedown on GreenSky.
That’s after a dreadful performance in the second quarter when earnings fell by a whopping 58% — the most in three years and short of Wall Street estimates — even after Solomon warned analysts ahead of time they would come in weak.
Goldman spokesperson Tony Fratto downplayed his boss’ pastime. “This is not news. David hasn’t publicly DJed an event in well over a year, which we have confirmed multiple times in the past,” he told The Post.
“Music was not a distraction from David’s work. The media attention became a distraction,” Fratto added.
At the same time, the bank’s foray into consumer lending hasn’t been the smashing success it was hyped up to be.
Reports recently revealed that an unnamed Goldman partner bashed the firm’s buzzed-about partnership with Apple.
“We should have never done this f–king thing,” an unnamed Goldman partner told colleagues just after the savings account’s big debut at Goldman’s headquarters in April — when most executives talked up the account for Apple users’ ability to earn 10 times the national average interest rate for savings accounts — per The Wall Street Journal.
Goldman also agreed to operate Apple credit cards — which offer users up to 3% cash back on their purchases via Daily Cash — and support the tech firm’s “buy now, pay later” offering.
Though the iPhone maker’s foray into commercial banking started off as a smashing success — pulling in $1 billion in deposits within days of its launch — Goldman has since reportedly been looking to offload the partnership to American Express or let Apple take more ownership of the collaboration, according to The Journal.
Goldman reportedly plans to sell GreenSky at a steep loss after just one year of owning the platform. Goldman will offload the asset to investment firm Sixth Street for some $500 million, according to The Journal.
The sale is expected to result in a 19-cents-per-share hit to Goldman’s third-quarter results, equal to about $60 million, per the outlet.
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