Morning Coffee: Exuberant Goldman Sachs partner embarked on "delightful love story" at firm. BofA MD's legs were too short
An internship in an investment bank is about getting an offer to return and converting it into a full-time analyst job. But according to one Goldman Sachs partner, it's also about making friends and maybe even encountering a future spouse.
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Elizabeth Reed, a Goldman partner and head of US equity syndicate, told Business Insider that when she interned with Goldman in summer 2006, her future husband was an intern with her. He was then in her analyst class too. However, they didn't actually meet each other until they were both vice presidents (VPs), says Reed, at which point they embarked upon a "delightful love story" despite the fact that he was "working ridiculous hours" while they were both preparing to become managing director (MD). "I knew immediately that he was my person," Reed reflects. They met over municipal bonds.
Reed's husband has since left the firm to work in investing, but Reed, whom Business Insider says is "exuberant", has stayed because, "I love Goldman Sachs." She says life as an intern and junior banker is the "polar opposite" of being lonely. - Although you sometimes work long hours, you're with "great people" and Reed says that in her day the interns, analysts, associates and VPs would all eat dinner together.
It's not just her husband that she met at GS. "Some of my closest friends, my first New York City friends, I met either during my internship or during my first years at Goldman," Reed recalls. Goldman Sachs is about the colleagues, she added: "The work is the work, but it's really the people that I like the most."
Separately, Elaine Foo, now aged 49, doesn't seem to have had such a fine time at Bank of America, where she was head of sales for EMEA and worked in the bank's family office team until 2016.
While she was on the BofA trading floor, Foo, who was 5ft 2 inches, reportedly felt “self-conscious about her height” and was allegedly bullied and victimized for being short. She decided to do something about it, by surgically lengthening her legs.
Today, Foo works for SDAX, Singapore's digital assets exchange. She is 5ft 6 inches as a result of the surgery, but it hasn't been easy. The leg lengthening resulted in one leg initially being six inches shorter than the other and "five years of hell" when Foo had to walk with crutches. She's just received an out-of-court settlement from the surgeon as a result. It might have been easier simply to leave BofA.
Meanwhile
Lamenting the end of Goldman Sachs' partnership. “The whole culture changed. It became much more ruthless, and less like a family.” (Guardian)
27-year-old Goldman Sachs associate Anthony Viggiano has been sentenced to 28 months in prison after passing insider tips to friends. "There is no excuse for my past actions. There is no one to blame but myself." (Bloomberg)
In preparation for its expected recovery in M&A revenues, Morgan Stanley has appointed another co-head of investment banking. It now has three: Mo Assomull, Eli Gross and Simon Smith. (Bloomberg)
Banking chiefs see an opportunity for more mergers and acquisitions in the energy sector, bringing a windfall in fees. The capital markets hope to send fresh dollars into pipelines, liquefied natural gas terminals and electric transmissions capabilities—and maybe even a new commitment to nuclear energy infrastructure. (Bloomberg)
US leveraged-loan issuance this year of nearly $670 billion is already more than double the volume in all of 2023 and not far off the near-$800 billion full-year total for 2021, which was by far the busiest year of the past five, according to Bloomberg BQNT data. More than 90% of these loans, which mainly fund private equity buyouts, were made to refinance more expensive debt, some of which had come from private credit.
Citi promoted Jamie Miller as its new head EMEA electronic equity sales trading, only eight years after he joined as a graduate hire. (The Trade)
PwC’s China unit has lost about two-thirds of its accounting revenues from mainland-listed clients this year, seeming as a result of its audit of failed property giant Evergrande. (Financial Times)
Hedge-fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin paid $44.6m for a nearly complete Stegosaurus skeleton at Sotheby’s on Wednesday. It is known as "Stan." (WSJ)
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