An executive with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. who has quit his job with a scathing resignation letter published in the New York Times is being hailed -- and mocked -- as the banking world's answer to Jerry Maguire.
Greg Smith, who headed Goldman's U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, resigned Wednesday with a letter in the Op-Ed section of the venerable newspaper, entitled "Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs."
His scornful "take this highly lucrative job and shove it" letter is making waves throughout the financial world and causing a huge headache for Goldman's public relations department, which has been forced to issue a statement to say it disagrees with Smith's take on the company.
In his screed, Smith writes that after 12 years with the company, the firm that he was once proud to be a part of has now descended into a company that brings him shame.
"To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money," Smith writes.
Smith says he once mentored interns, advised big hedge funds, and amassed a client base with assets of more than US$1 trillion.
"I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work," he said.
He says when he started with Goldman, there was a "spirit of humility and always doing right by our clients." The culture at the time was the "secret sauce" that made Goldman great, he says.
That all changed, he writes.
"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," he writes.
He wondered why the company has no humility after having been charged with fraud by U.S. regulators for its marketing of sub-prime mortgages.
Smith recounts that the proudest moments of his life -- his scholarship to Stanford, his selection as a Rhodes Scholar finalist, his bronze medal at ping pong in the Maccabiah Games in Israel -- all came through hard work, with no shortcuts.
"Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn't feel right to me anymore," he writes.
Goldman Sachs released a statement to say it disagreed with Smith's comments.
"In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful," the firm said. "This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves."
"Goldman Sachs" quickly began to trend on Twitter, where many praised Smith's chutzpah and others mocked.
New York Times senior writer Dwight Garner tweeted: "Goldman Sachs guy lost me at 'secret sauce.'"
Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams tweeted: "I do wish that in his resignation letter to Goldman Sachs, Greg Smith had said, ‘It just used to be about the music, man.'"
She added in another tweet: "Greg Smith's going to have the most awkward farewell party EVER."
British satire website The Daily Mash responded by publishing a resignation letter from Darth Vader, who boasts that his own proudest moments include the pod race and being lured over to the Dark Side.
"The Empire today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about remote strangulation. It just doesn't feel right to me anymore," the parody reads.
