Dive Brief:

• Goldman Sachs paid CEO David Solomon $31 million for 2023 — a 24% boost over the previous year, the bank disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday.
• The boost comes despite a 24% dip in net income for Goldman, to $8.52 billion. However, the bank praised Solomon for leading the “swift execution” of “a series of actions that narrowed [Goldman’s] strategic focus — namely, its retreat from consumer lending in the selloff of GreenSky to a Sixth Street-led consortium of investors. Additionally, tech giant Apple sent a proposal to Goldman, aiming to end their credit card partnership by early 2025, sources told The Wall Street Journal in November.
• Solomon’s would be the steepest increase in CEO pay reported among the six largest U.S. banks so far this year. Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf saw an 18.4% compensation boost to $29 million. Morgan Stanley’s now-executive chair, James Gorman, received a 17.5% pay bump — to $37 million — for his last year as that bank’s CEO. And JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon saw a 4% raise to $36 million in 2023.

Dive Insight:

Of all six big-bank CEOs, Solomon’s pay historically has been the most volatile. He received $27.5 million for 2019, his first in the bank’s top role. That amount would have held steady in 2020, but Goldman clawed back $10 million in connection with the bank’s ties to the 1MDB scandal. 

Goldman notched a record year for net revenue and net earnings in 2021 — and rewarded Solomon with $35 million, putting him neck-and-neck with Gorman as the nation’s top-paid bank CEO. But Solomon’s pay dropped 28.6% in 2022, to $25 million, as Goldman reorganized, trimmed its ranks and assigned roughly $3 billion in historical losses to its Platform Solutions unit, which couched much of the bank’s consumer-banking effort.

Solomon’s 2023 pay comprises a $2 million annual salary, an $8.7 million cash bonus and $20.3 million in restricted stock units based on financial performance metrics and adherence to strategic priorities, as well as risk management and controls, the bank’s compensation committee said.

Not every top-six bank CEO saw a compensation boost in 2023. Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan received a $1 million, or 3.3%, cut for the year, to $29 million. Solomon’s 2023 compensation package leapfrogs Moynihan’s — and Scharf’s — to make him the third-best-paid U.S. bank CEO, behind Gorman and Dimon.

Citi will be the last of the six largest U.S. lenders to disclose CEO pay.