Swati Bhatia, a Goldman Sachs executive who is listed as the head of Marcus and co-CEO of GreenSky, is stepping down from her role, according to an internal note seen Tuesday by Reuters.
She will retire from the partnership and serve as an advisory director, the wire service reported.
The development comes less than a week after Goldman CEO David Solomon confirmed the bank would make staff cuts in the first half of January. The headcount reduction, rumored as far back as July, could encompass 4,000 jobs, several sources reported last month.
At the same time, at least one senior Goldman banker stressed that voluntary departures would shake up the bank.
“We’ll probably have to rebuild [parts of] the business [in 2023] with the attrition,” the banker told the Financial Times. “[Solomon] wants to run the business as lean as he can. He’s taking some real risk around that.”
Marcus, Goldman’s consumer-banking unit, has long been targeted as fertile ground for right-sizing. Under a reorganization announced in October, Goldman is splitting Marcus and planting the platform’s consumer-focused operations under the bank’s asset- and wealth-management unit run by Marc Nachmann. A subset of Marcus’ business that deals with corporate clients is set to become a stand-alone entity, Platform Solutions, run by Stephanie Cohen.
Bhatia joined Goldman Sachs in February 2021 — the same month a pair of previous Marcus leaders, Omer Ismail and David Stark, left the consumer-banking unit for the Walmart-run fintech One.
Goldman, in June 2021, hired Peeyush Nahar, a former Uber vice president, to serve as global head of consumer business, and Bhatia has operated under his vertical.
Marcus is no stranger to turnover. Within a year of Ismail and Stark’s departure, Marcus lost its head of product, head of point-of-sale financing, CFO and a key consumer wealth-management executive.
Goldman spokespeople at the time downplayed the departures, saying the bank “has serious momentum and a deep and growing bench of talent” and spotlighting Marcus’ leadership team in particular, adding, “We are very excited about the future of the consumer business.”
Before joining Goldman, Bhatia served for two years as Stripe’s chief payments risk officer and logged stints of eight years each at PayPal and Capital One, according to her LinkedIn profile.
In a separate move, Goldman appointed Zeeshan Razzaqui as co-head of merchant point-of-sale lending in its Platform Solutions unit, Reuters reported Tuesday.
