Return of Goldman Sachs employees to the office marks a clear inflection point for the industry
14 June 2021
Monday was the first day back in the office for Goldman Sachs employees in New York.
Why it matters: The move brings an influx of office workers into lower Manhattan, the second-largest central business district in the country. It also marks a clear inflection point for the finance industry.
What they're saying: Bloomberg's Jennifer Surane was on the scene:
"Early this morning, employees high-fived and hugged each other as they streamed into Goldman’s Manhattan office in the drizzling rain. They’ll be greeted by free food in the cafeteria and an array of food trucks with music blaring all week"
This is all an attempt to get bankers to start physically encountering each other again — a way to kick-start the kind of serendipitous conversations that proponents of working-from-the-office, including Goldman CEO David Solomon, love to extol.
The intrigue: Goldman's decision to reopen sets up a natural experiment vs. Citigroup, which has largely kept its offices closed.
What to watch: Will the office energy give Goldman a competitive advantage? Or will the freedom of work-from-home make Citi the employer of choice for parents, remote workers and people who don't love schlepping to lower Manhattan every day?
Of note: The surprisingly long walk from Goldman's elevators to the food trucks will also force employees to reacquaint themselves with Mural, the 80-foot-long painting by Julie Mehretu that dominates the view of the Goldman lobby from the street.
- The multilayered work includes architectural drawings of banks and mercantile exchanges, as well as references to trade routes, the growth of cities and other indicia of the way in which Goldman sits at the center of the world's most complex financial web.
- The New Yorker's Calvin Tompkins called it "the most ambitious painting I’ve seen in a dozen years." Now it is a symbol of the way in which Goldman is weaving back together its disparate employee base.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.