Beth Hammack, a 30-year Goldman Sachs veteran once seen as a top contender for CFO, has left the company, according to her personal LinkedIn.
“It’s been an incredible journey. I plan to take a break for the next several months, respond more slowly to email, and spend time with my incredible husband and 2 sons,” she wrote Feb. 26. “I'm excited to decide what comes next.”
Hammack got her start at the firm as an analyst in capital markets, and since then has “tried to make an impact — on our people, our clients and our firm,” she wrote.
“I've loved working alongside dedicated colleagues to grow our businesses — improving the profitability and efficiency of our Global Repo desk, creating the Global Short Term Macro desk, and transforming Corporate Treasury to prudently manage capital and liquidity with a keen eye on cost,” she wrote.
Hammack took on her most recent role in 2021 after serving as treasurer.
She’d been passed over for CFO in favor of Denis Coleman, Bloomberg reported, in what bank executives at the time dubbed “an effort to help her gain more experience running a revenue-generating group that would set her up for more senior positions later.”
Hammack also previously served as CEO of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, where she led funding, liquidity and capital management strategy.
“Goldman Sachs is an extraordinary institution that manufactures the world’s best executive talent. Beth had an incredible 30-year run of transforming businesses,” Katie Koch, CEO of TCW Group and a former colleague, told Bloomberg. “She is unbelievably well positioned for her next leadership role.”
In her farewell LinkedIn post, Hammack highlighted the importance of risk, of investing in people, and of promoting continuous improvement.
“You will never lose an argument if you focus on doing what’s right for the organization. Not your silo but what is best for the whole. It may take you longer to get where you’re going, but you’ll make a bigger difference and feel great when you get there,” she wrote.
Two other Goldman executives might be on the way out, too, according to the Financial Times.
Mark Sorrell, the bank’s co-head of mergers and acquisitions, and Gonzalo Garcia, Goldman’s co-head of European investment banking, have both threatened to quit after they weren’t included in a new operating committee, sources told the Financial Times.
Sorrell declined to comment to FT. Garcia couldn’t be reached for comment by FT.
The panel from which Sorrell and Garcia were excluded is one of two new operating committees CEO David Solomon established last year: one for investment banking and another for trading. Garcia and Sorrell were excluded from the investment banking committee, the Financial Times reported.
Committee members were chosen by the co-heads of investment banking and markets, a division created by the merger of two divisions in 2022.
Intended as a way to bring up Goldman’s new generation of leaders and to streamline decision making, sources told the publication that the new committees “ruffled feathers internally about who was in or out.”
The aforementioned executives would join a growing list of departures from Goldman over the past year.
Jim Esposito, co-head of the bank’s global banking and markets division, announced his intention to retire after nearly 29 years last month. Esposito had his sights set on becoming Goldman’s CEO or president, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal at the time.
Last year, 25-year vet Julian Salisbury, asset and wealth management CIO, departed Goldman for a job at Sixth Street in June; Luke Sarsfield, a global co-head of asset management, left Goldman after 23 years in April to take the helm as CEO of asset manager P10; and Ed Emerson, head of global commodities, is set to retire next month after 24 years at the Wall Street giant.
