Sidney J. Weinberg Jr. retired as a general partner from Goldman Sachs in 1988, but almost every week afterward until his death, he came into the office. He would meet with staff to give advice about Goldman’s culture and values, hoping to leave a little of the firm’s past in the present.
On October 13, 2010 hundreds of Goldman executives and alumni, including Goldman’s chief executive and chairman, Lloyd C. Blankfein, joined with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and others to gather at the Knickerbocker Club on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and pay their respects to Mr. Weinberg’s family. Known as Jimmy, Mr. Weinberg, 87, worked at Goldman for almost 40 years, and at different times both his father and uncle ran firm, which was founded in 1869.
Mr. Weinberg’s death on Oct. 4 marked the end of an era, not just for Goldman, but for all of Wall Street, which for years was controlled by private firms run by families like the Weinbergs. Mr. Weinberg died at his home in Marion, Mass. In Mr. Weinberg’s heyday, things were simpler. Firms had limited appetite for risk. Instead, brokerage firms focused on advisory work and raising capital for others.
Today, firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are publicly traded, a move that allowed them to push into new and sometimes controversial areas like trading, risking billions of dollars of capital in pursuit of bigger profits.
“He was his father’s son and he heard about the family business every night at dinner,” said Goldman’s former co-chairman, John Whitehead, a longtime friend of Mr. Weinberg’s. “His death is definitely the formal end of an era in family businesses on Wall Street. The firms are much more professional now.”
Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850 by Henry and Emanuel Lehman as an Alabama cotton trader. They and their descendants played an important role in running the firm until 1969 when Robert Lehman, then at the helm of the firm, died. And Goldman was founded by Marcus Goldman, who later asked his son in law Samuel Sachs to join the business, forming Goldman Sachs.
In 1907, Sidney J. Weinberg Sr., Mr. Weinberg’s father, was hired at Goldman. His first job: cleaning spittoons. In the late 1930s, he was named senior partner, a position he held almost until his death in 1969. His brother John L. Weinberg, also joined Goldman and ran the firm from 1976 to 1990. Both are now dead.
Sidney J. Weinberg Jr. joined Goldman Sachs as a general partner in 1965 and led its investment banking services department from 1978 to 1988. He continued to work at the firm, becoming first a limited partner and then senior director, titles given to some retired partners. Unlike many Goldman alumni, Mr. Weinberg kept an intentionally low profile over the years. One friend said that he Googled Mr. Weinberg’s name when he died and that it found no articles on him. “He would have considered that a badge of honor,” this person said.
The Weinberg name still casts a long shadow on Goldman and Wall Street: Peter formerly worked at Goldman, and a nephew, John S. Weinberg, is currently a vice chairman at the firm.
Still, Sidney Weinberg’s Wall Street is gone. Goldman was one of the last brokerage firms to go public, offering its shares to the public in 1999. Its public offering transformed the firm, giving it access to capital markets, a currency that allowed it to pay people more and aggressively expand both at home and abroad.
Mr. Weinberg opposed Goldman’s initial public offering, but Mr. Whitehead says he knew that expansion was inevitable. “We all came around,” said Mr. Whitehead, who last saw Mr. Weinberg on July 1. The two men met for lunch at Mr. Weinberg’s home. Mr. Whitehead says they shared a glass of white wine on the porch, before retiring for lunch. “Our successors saw the opportunity for us and going public was necessary.”
No comments:
Post a Comment