Goldman Sachs Group Inc. cut Chief Executive Officer David Solomon’s compensation by about 30% to $25 million for 2022, a year in which stock prices and profits fell and the company pulled back from public efforts to create a consumer bank.
The package includes a base salary of $2 million and variable compensation of $23 million, with $16.1 million in the form of restricted stock units.
The investment-banking giant pouring billions of dollars into consumer ventures, dubbed Marcus, has only posted a pretax loss of $3.8 billion over the past three years. Solomon has admitted that the company is trying to push quickly into the sector.
Goldman is embarking on one of its biggest rounds of job cuts this year, with plans to eliminate about 3,200 jobs as it tries to cut costs.
The industrial downturn has reduced earnings on Wall Street. At Goldman, net income fell 48% to $11.3 billion last year, and the bank’s return on equity was 10.2%, below the 14% to 16% target set earlier in 2022.
The stock is down 10% in 2022, outpacing the 12% decline in the S&P 500 Financials Index.
Solomon, 61, is one of the best-paid CEOs of a major US bank for 2021, receiving $35 million in compensation – a figure that matched Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman that year. For 2022, Gorman sees his salary cut by 10% to $31.5 million. JPMorgan Chase & Co. left CEO Jamie Dimon’s salary unchanged at $34.5 million for the year.
– With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan
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