- Goldman Sachs is discussing moving some roles in its global-markets division to Florida, sources said.
- While the plans are still in the early stages, more than 100 traders and salespeople could move, one person said.
- The bank has already asked asset-management staff to volunteer to move to West Palm Beach.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Goldman Sachs employees in the US officially reported back to the office on Monday after more than a year of remote work. But some of them may soon be reporting to a very different office.
The bank is in the early stages of moving traders and salespeople to Florida, according to people with knowledge of the plans. The move would mean placing dozens of front-office staff members from Goldman’s core Wall Street operations outside a financial hub, a once unthinkable outcome for a firm that has considered New York home for 152 years.
Leaders of Goldman’s sales-and-trading operation, known as the global-markets division, have asked desk heads to poll their workers about who might want to relocate, one of the people said. While very few people have made firm commitments, more than 100 traders and salespeople are expected to relocate to a new office the bank is planning in West Palm Beach, the person said.
The transplants are expected to include the bank’s most senior executives, those 400 or so partners who earn almost $1 million and get a cut of a special bonus pool. Several partners have already expressed interest, one of the people said.
High-performing managing directors or vice presidents are also being encouraged to relocate, to signal that the office won’t be considered a backwater that kneecaps their Wall Street career, the person said.
Goldman’s senior executives would take an active role in deciding who gets to move and would look to relocate clusters of teammates to the West Palm Beach office, one of the people said. Each cluster would be an offshoot of a larger team based in New York and made up of as many as eight or 10 people.
Setting it up that way would ensure that employees still enjoy the benefits of working with close colleagues even though they’re 1,200 miles from the bank’s headquarters. Employees in Florida would likely spend significant time shuttling back and forth to New York for face time with executives working from Manhattan, one of the people said.
The division’s leaders are agnostic about whether credit traders or interest-rate salespeople make the move, though those covering the emerging markets from New York may find Florida an easier location for working with Latin American clients, one of the people said.
Goldman’s sales-and-trading operation is led by Ashok Varadhan and Marc Nachmann. While Varadhan lives in New York, Nachmann commutes to New York from a private development in Boca Raton, Florida, according to real-estate records.
Florida has been Nachmann’s home for more than 15 years, according to two people with knowledge of his arrangement. During the pandemic, his Florida base meant Nachmann met with clients in person roughly six to eight months before New York reopened, one of the people said.
Many hedge-fund clients fled the Northeast when COVID-19 infections spiked last year and Florida took a more lax approach to controlling the virus’ spread. The migration has shown no signs of abating as the pandemic recedes.
In March, Bloomberg reported that the hedge-fund manager Dan Sundheim was moving to Miami and bringing some staff members from his hedge fund, D1 Capital Partners, to the area. Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. last year announced its intention to move its headquarters to Florida. Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management is planning to open more offices in Florida, as is Steve Cohen’s Point72 Capital Management. Citadel has also shifted employees to the Sunshine State.
Florida has become a destination not just for its lower taxes — authorities don’t levy personal-income, estate, or capital-gains taxes — but for its milder climate, plentiful golf courses, and pristine beaches.
The lower taxes appeal to Goldman partners, who make $950,000 in annual salary and receive millions more in bonuses and income from the firm’s private-investment funds. Goldman staffers who move to Florida will not be expected to take a pay cut, one of the people said.
Goldman’s Florida expansion plans began before the pandemic, when executives including Eric Lane, then a cohead of the asset-management business, explored the option for the business. Lane has since joined Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management as chief operating officer and president.
When Goldman CEO David Solomon and President John Waldron learned of the asset-management arm’s research, they suggested broadening it to the entire firm, one of the people said. The process slowed as the leaders asked the heads of Goldman’s other divisions to poll their workers about relocating.
Thanks to Lane’s early efforts, Goldman’s asset-management arm is furthest along. The division has been planning for months to move staff to West Palm Beach, where the firm is reportedly nearing an agreement to lease space at 360 Rosemary Ave. In March, Bloomberg reported that managers had asked for volunteers willing to relocate.
Asset-management staff members tend to research long-term investments in a more deliberate manner, making their move to a more remote location easier to accomplish.
Traders, on the other hand, make quicker decisions that can be informed by trading-floor chatter or asymmetric information they pick up from contacts who run in the same circles. Salespeople, charged with staying in close contact with clients, have traditionally been based in financial hubs where their clients live and work.
Over the past decade or so, Goldman Sachs has shifted more of its workforce out of high-cost locations like New York, London, and Hong Kong and toward satellite offices in places like Salt Lake City; Dallas; Bengaluru, India; and Warsaw, Poland.
At first, many of those roles were more back office and middle office — technology, call-center, and compliance staff, for example — though increasingly those locations host front-office employees. People with knowledge of the bank’s plans put its growing presence in South Florida in a similar light.
It’s unclear how moving staff to Florida fits in with Solomon’s push to get employees back in the office. Solomon has been a vocal proponent of getting employees back to their desks, calling the work-from-home state not a “new normal” but “an aberration” that would go away once the pandemic recedes.
This post has been updated to reflect that James Esposito is no longer cohead of the global markets division.
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