Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs' $25m job vacancy is a complicated business. Citi's most important person is a nice guy with six children

Kathryn Ruemmler's exit from Goldman Sachs in the wake of revelations about her historic messages to Jeffrey Epstein, is not a simple thing. Ruemmler volunteered to step down from her job as Goldman's general counsel in February. She's still there. The Financial Times reported at the start of June that Ruemmler would be staying on in an advisory capacity and claimed this was causing some disquiet. Now, the Wall Street Journal says this disquiet may run deep.

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As Goldman searches for someone to replace Ruemmler in her $25m a year role, the WSJ says Ruemmler has been working very closely with search firm Spencer Stuart, which has been conducting an external search. She's vetting the candidates and she's sitting in on the interviews, says the WSJ. Some potential candidates are allegedly avoiding the vacancy as a result. 

Worse, the WSJ suggests that factions exist within Goldman of people who are pro and anti-Ruemmler. The WSJ says Ruemmler thinks her enemies have been briefing against her. We have not confirmed this. Ruemmler's supporters are understood to include CEO David Solomon and director David Viniar. Her detractors are understood to have included Russell Horwitz, Goldman's short lived chief of staff, who coincidentally left in May.

Goldman doesn't have to hire Ruemmler's replacement externally. It also happens to have an internal candidate in the form of Michael Bosworth, her former deputy. The WSJ says Bosworth wants the job but that he's been unsettled by the fact that Goldman is considering hiring an outsider instead. 

There are suggestions, too, that Ruemmler isn't sure that Bosworth is ready for the big job. However, Ruemmler's personal PR informs us that this absolutely isn't the case. - "Any suggestion that Ms. Ruemmler has not been supportive of Michael Bosworth is false. Michael is an exceptional lawyer of the highest integrity and a valued friend and colleague of Ms. Ruemmler’s. She personally recruited Michael to Goldman Sachs, and it remains one of her proudest decisions. He is one of the finest people she knows and is an exemplary leader of the legal department." In turn, this might suggest the external search process is a waste of time.

Goldman didn't respond to a request to comment for this article. Its spokesman told the WSJ that Ruemmler has been "an excellent general counsel,” that it "made sense for her to stay during the transition [to a new general counsel]." The job was so complicated that the pre-Ruemmler general counsel had also lingered on for two years while she learned the ropes. It would be "negligence" for Ruemmler not to be involved in choosing her successor, declared the spokesman. 

Away from the recruitment dramas, Ruemmler is appearing before a Congressional Committee tomorrow in relation to her links to Epstein. She has always denied any wrongdoing. Her spokeswoman said: "Ms. Ruemmler has been open and transparent about her interactions with Jeffrey Epstein when she was a defense lawyer in private practice many years ago. She did nothing wrong and had nothing to do with Epstein’s crimes.” 

The Epstein files revealed that Ruemmler once called Epstein a sweetie and told her assistant she adored him. Before she joined Goldman, she also received various gifts from Epstein, including a $9,400 Hermès bag, a $4,200 Fendi fur-trimmed plaid wool coat and a $1,700 Fendi bag. Maybe this was nothing unusual? The WSJ suggests that Ruemmler acted this way with other business associates, but we have not confirmed this. 

Either way, Goldman's $25m job could be hard to fill. Goldman disputes this too, though. “There’s overwhelming interest in the position,” Goldman's spokesman told the WSJ. Well then.

Separately, there have been some articles recently about special Jane Fraser, CEO of Citi is and how she's chums with Donald Trump, but Business Insider now has a profile of Tim Ryan, the man cleaning up Citi's data mess and it turns out he's special too.

Tim Ryan is a good guy, says Business Insider. He spends his weekends writing notes to his team. He hosts a video chat called "Talks with Tim."  He's heavy on communication. He's observant - he brought Citi's data team onto the 19th floor of Citi's office after realising they were isolated. He's also hyper-competitive and wants to "win."

Given that data has been the big issue in Citi's consent orders and that Ryan is sorting this out, he's arguably Citi's most important person beside Fraser herself. Like other senior men in banking, Ryan has been unusually fecund and has six children. Sometimes he asks them about managing people at Citi.  Citi was historically, "reckless, arrogant and complacent," says Ryan. It's a new world. 

Meanwhile...

Barclays wants senior people in the office four days a week instead of three. It says: "Our most senior leaders will spend an additional day in the office to support collaboration, decision-making and leadership visibility.” (The Banker)  

UBS added 100 bankers in Asia. It wants some more. (Financial News) 

RBC wants to hire across equities, commodities and rates in Europe. (Financial News) 

RBC is expanding its credit derivatives business under Santosh Sateesh from Credit Suisse. He currently has six traders and two salespeople. (Bloomberg) 

It's a bad time to work in VC in the Middle East. Deals are at a five year low. (Semafor) 

Balyasny is now fully licensed in Abu Dhabi and is hiring PMs for all strategies, including equity long/short, commodities, systematic, multi-asset arbitrage, fixed income and macro under Yash Agarwal. (Financial News) 

Bank of America hired nine bankers to cover the US midmarket. (Reuters) 

Last year, Freshfields overhauled its remuneration structure, which had led to dozens of its roughly 500 partners being handed fewer equity points. Now it's cut people who objected to that. (Financial Times) 

Unemployed Swiss bankers are at a record high. 4,474 people from banks were registered as unemployed with regional job centres in June. (Swissinfo) 

The Bank of England ran a voluntary redundancy scheme. 500 people came forward. Now there are concerns that it's lost some of its most talented staff. (Financial Times) 

JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup are forecast to report a year-on-year fees increase of 27 per cent in the second quarter. This would be the highest since 2021. (Financial Times) 

AllianceBernstein has installed a different set of incentives to encourage its asset managers to challenge the output of chatbots. “We say, how many times did you challenge what AI said? How many times did you override what it said? Did you capture that decision? Were you right most of the time? Were you wrong most of the time?” (Financial Times) 

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