UPDATE: April 16, 2021: Goldman Sachs's communications chief, Jake Siewert, is expected to announce Friday he's leaving the bank after nine years, according to The New York Times.
Siewert will take a role as a political and policy adviser at private-equity firm Warburg Pincus, the Times reported. The move will reunite him with Obama-era Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for whom Siewert had been a top aide. Geithner serves as Warburg Pincus's president.
Siewert's departure from Goldman is amicable, anonymous sources told the Times, although Siewert was considered closer to the CEO who hired him, Lloyd Blankfein, than to David Solomon, who succeeded Blankfein.
Goldman has seen a spate of executive departures this year, including its asset-management co-head, its general counsel and three leaders from its digital banking arm. Marcus's chief executive, Omer Ismail, and head of large partnerships, David Stark, left the bank in February for Walmart's fintech startup. Marcus's head of product is leaving for JPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest bank announced Tuesday.
For its part, Goldman touts "a deep and growing bench of talent," a bank spokesman said in February. The bank recently hired Andrea Williams, investment firm Oaktree Capital's communications and branding chief, as its media relations lead, the Times reported Friday.
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Goldman Sachs's Marcus is losing another executive — this time, to JPMorgan Chase.
Marcus's head of product, Sonali Divilek, is set to join the nation's largest bank this summer as head of digital channels and products for consumer and community banking, according to a memo seen Tuesday by Business Insider.
Divilek had just been promoted to her latest role at Marcus in January and helped oversee the launch of robo-advisory service Marcus Invest in February. She joined Goldman as a managing director in June 2019 and capped a 15-year stint at American Express in 2017 as head of global charge products in the card network's global commercial payments unit, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Her departure comes about a month and a half after two top Marcus executives — the digital bank's chief, Omer Ismail, and its head of large partnerships, David Stark — fled to join Walmart's burgeoning fintech startup. Ismail, too, had taken a promotion in January before leaving the following month.
Divilek's promotion itself came after Marcus's previous head of product, Adam Dell, stepped down in mid-January, according to a memo seen by Business Insider.
Goldman has typically downplayed executive flight. "Our business has serious momentum and a deep and growing bench of talent," Andrew Williams, a bank spokesperson, told Bloomberg when news broke that Ismail and Stark were leaving. "We wish these two well.”
The bank lost two more executives in the following days. Karen Seymour, Goldman's general counsel, left the bank in March and rejoined the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. Eric Lane, the co-head of Goldman's asset-management business, is headed to investment firm Tiger Global Management later this year to become its president and chief operating officer.
Aside from Divilek, JPMorgan Chase is adding two more executives with big-bank or big-tech experience. Kaaren Hanson joined the bank Monday as chief design officer in the consumer and community banking group, according to Tuesday's memo. She served until March as executive vice president of experience design and research at Wells Fargo and, from 2016 to 2019, was product design director at Facebook.
Sumit Gupta, a 10-year veteran of Google, will join the bank in May as head of consumer experience and personalization in the consumer and community banking unit, Business Insider reported.
"Sonali, Kaaren and Sumit's expertise, combined with the incredible talent we already have on our team, will lead us forward in creating a future of digital banking that helps nearly half of U.S. households bank faster and easier from anywhere," Allison Beer, the consumer and community banking team's chief product officer and head of customer experience and digital, told the publication via email.
