David Solomon

Overview

David Solomon
Born	1962 (age 63–64) Hartsdale, New York, United States
Citizenship	United States
Education	Bachelor of Arts in government
Alma mater	Hamilton College
Occupation(s)	Investment banker; business executive; disc jockey
Employer	Goldman Sachs
Known for	Leading Goldman Sachs; DJ performances as DJ D-Sol
Title	Chairman and chief executive officer
Term	CEO (2018–present); chairman (2019–present)
Predecessor	Lloyd Blankfein
Board member of	Goldman Sachs; Hamilton College; Robin Hood Foundation; NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital; Paley Center for Media; Partnership for New York City
Spouse	Mary Elizabeth Coffey (m. 1989; div. 2018)
Children	2 daughters

🧑‍💼 David Michael Solomon (born 1962) is an American investment banker who has served as chief executive officer (CEO) of Goldman Sachs since October 2018 and chairman since January 2019. A specialist in leveraged finance and corporate advisory work, he rose through the firm’s investment banking division before being appointed president and chief operating officer and ultimately succeeding Lloyd Blankfein at the head of the bank. Known for pursuing a strategic diversification of Goldman’s businesses and for an unusual public persona as electronic dance-music DJ "DJ D-Sol", he has become one of the most prominent Wall Street chief executives of the early twenty-first century.

🌆 Background and rise. Solomon was raised in a middle-class family in Westchester County, New York, where his father worked in a small publishing business and his mother supervised an audiology department. He attended Edgemont Junior–Senior High School, took part in student government and sports, and worked part-time jobs such as scooping ice cream and serving as a camp counsellor, experiences he later cited as formative in building his work ethic. After graduating from Hamilton College in 1984 with a degree in government, he embarked on a Wall Street career that took him through Irving Trust, Drexel Burnham Lambert and Bear Stearns before he joined Goldman Sachs as a partner in 1999.

📈 Strategy and controversies. As CEO, Solomon has pursued a strategy of expanding Goldman Sachs beyond its traditional strengths in trading and investment banking into areas such as consumer finance, wealth management and technology platforms, while also making high-profile commitments on issues such as board diversity and climate policy. These initiatives have been accompanied by setbacks, notably heavy losses in the firm’s consumer banking ventures and reputational damage from the long-running 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, as well as periods of internal dissent over his leadership style. By the mid-2020s, however, Goldman’s earnings and share price had rebounded, and the board signalled its confidence by awarding Solomon a substantial long-term stock grant intended to keep him in the role for at least another five years.

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Early life and education

🎓 Family and upbringing. Solomon was born in 1962 in Hartsdale, New York, and grew up in nearby Scarsdale in Westchester County, in what he has described as a comfortable middle-class household. His father, Alan Solomon, worked as an executive in a small publishing firm, while his mother, Sandra, supervised an audiology department, and they encouraged their son to combine ambition with a strong sense of responsibility. During his school years at Edgemont Junior–Senior High School he served as student government president, played on sports teams and held part-time jobs, including at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop and as a camp counsellor, experiences that reinforced his view that hard work and dealing with people were central to success.

📚 Hamilton College. In 1980 Solomon enrolled at Hamilton College, a small liberal-arts institution in upstate New York, where he studied government and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1984. At Hamilton he was not yet focused on a specific career path, spending time bartending on campus and exploring different options before gravitating toward finance. In later interviews he has credited the college’s emphasis on writing, analytical thinking and communication with preparing him for the demands of investment banking and senior management.

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Early career in banking

💼 First roles on Wall Street. After leaving college Solomon initially sought an analyst position at Goldman Sachs but was rejected, with one partner reportedly telling him that he was “not Goldman Sachs material”. Instead he joined Irving Trust, a New York bank, in what he later described as a kind of postgraduate education in finance, learning the basics of credit and capital markets. In 1986 he moved to the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he started out selling commercial paper and later transitioned into the high-yield bond department at the height of the junk-bond boom.

📉 Junk bonds and Bear Stearns. The collapse of Drexel Burnham in 1990, amid regulatory investigations into the firm’s junk-bond activities, forced Solomon to move again; at age 27 he joined Bear Stearns, where he eventually led the firm’s junk-bond and leveraged-finance business. Colleagues and later profiles credited this period, which combined fast-growing markets with episodes of crisis, with sharpening his skills as a negotiator in complex capital-raising and restructuring transactions and with reinforcing his appetite for high-pressure environments.

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Career at Goldman Sachs

🏦 Joining Goldman Sachs. In 1999 Solomon made a pivotal career move by leaving Bear Stearns to join Goldman Sachs as a partner, taking charge of the leveraged-finance group advising companies on issuing high-yield debt. Arriving as a lateral hire at a firm that traditionally promoted from within, he initially faced scepticism from some long-serving colleagues, but he built a reputation as a disciplined operator and strong client adviser. By 2006 he had been promoted to co-head of the investment banking division, a post he would hold for roughly a decade, during which the franchise expanded its market share and profitability, with notable mandates including the initial public offering of athletic-wear company Lululemon in 2007.

🧱 President and heir apparent. When Goldman’s longtime president Gary Cohn left the firm in late 2016 to enter government service, Solomon was named co-chief operating officer and president, sharing responsibilities with another senior executive before emerging as sole president in early 2018. On 1 October 2018 he became CEO of Goldman Sachs, and in January 2019 he assumed the additional role of chairman, marking a generational shift from his predecessor Lloyd Blankfein and from the trading-oriented leadership that had dominated the bank. His early tenure was associated with cultural changes, including a relaxation of the firm’s historically strict dress code, greater emphasis on recruiting technology specialists and formal efforts to protect junior bankers’ time, all intended to make Goldman more attractive to new talent while preserving its performance-driven ethos.

💳 Diversifying the business mix. Strategically, Solomon sought to reduce Goldman’s dependence on market-sensitive trading income by expanding into steadier revenue lines such as consumer banking, digital platforms and wealth and asset management. The firm launched Marcus, an online savings and lending platform, and entered into high-profile partnerships including the Apple-branded consumer credit card, while also investing in technology and relocating some operations to lower-cost centres such as Salt Lake City to improve efficiency. At the same time, he emphasised wealth and asset management as long-term growth engines, arguing that a broader mix of advisory, investing and lending activities would make the franchise more resilient across economic cycles.

🔁 Refocusing on core strengths. The move into mass-market consumer banking ultimately proved more challenging than envisioned, and by 2022 Goldman’s consumer division had accumulated losses estimated at around US$3 billion. Under Solomon the firm responded by halting new personal-loan originations, selling portions of its consumer loan book and scaling back its ambitions in retail finance, while recommitting resources to its traditional strengths in investment banking, trading and institutional asset management. Solomon publicly framed the retrenchment as part of an experimental approach to strategy, arguing that strong companies must be willing to try new initiatives and to change course quickly when results fall short. By 2024 Goldman reported a rebound in earnings and some of its strongest quarterly profits in years, suggesting that the refocus on core businesses and higher-return opportunities was being received positively by markets.

📊 Shareholder returns. From Solomon’s appointment as CEO in late 2018 through early 2025, Goldman Sachs’s share price increased by roughly 174 per cent, with nearly 50 per cent of that gain occurring during 2024 amid broader market strength and improving firm performance. The bank’s total shareholder return over this period placed it among the stronger performers in the large global banking peer group, although its valuation multiple at times lagged wealth-management-focused rivals, reflecting ongoing investor debate about the long-term balance of Goldman’s business lines and risk profile.

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Compensation and wealth

💰 Executive pay. Solomon’s compensation as CEO has fluctuated with Goldman Sachs’s performance and with board responses to regulatory matters. In 2021, a strong year for the firm, he received a pay package of about US$35 million. Following weaker results and continued fallout from the 1MDB scandal, the board reduced his compensation for 2022 by 29 per cent to US$25 million, comprising a US$2 million base salary, a US$6.9 million cash bonus and roughly US$16 million in stock awards. As earnings recovered, his total pay was increased to about US$39 million for 2024, and in January 2025 Goldman’s board granted him a one-off long-term stock award valued at around US$80 million, structured to vest over five years and intended to encourage him to remain in post through the late 2020s.

🏦 Personal fortune. Decades of senior roles in investment banking and substantial stock-based compensation have left Solomon with considerable personal wealth. Regulatory filings and data compiled by financial-analytics firm Quiver Quantitative indicate that he directly owns on the order of 140,000 shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a stake worth well over US$100 million at prevailing market prices in late 2025. Commentators have estimated his overall net worth in the range of roughly US$150–200 million, placing him among the wealthier Wall Street executives but short of billionaire status.

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Board roles and philanthropy

🤝 Board memberships. Beyond his executive responsibilities at Goldman Sachs, Solomon has held a number of board and trustee positions. He serves as chair of the board of trustees of Hamilton College, his alma mater, and sits on the boards of the Robin Hood Foundation, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and the Paley Center for Media, as well as the executive committee of the Partnership for New York City. These roles underscore his involvement in higher education, healthcare, media and civic initiatives in New York City, and reflect a pattern of engagement beyond the financial sector.

🎗️ Philanthropic programmes. Through Goldman Sachs and personally, Solomon has supported programmes focused on education, entrepreneurship and poverty reduction. He has been involved with initiatives such as Goldman’s 10,000 Small Businesses programme and has spoken publicly about the importance of expanding opportunity for underrepresented communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic he joined other senior executives in committing portions of his salary to relief efforts, and he has directed proceeds from his DJ performances and recordings toward charitable causes, particularly organisations active in New York City.

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Personal life

👨‍👩‍👧 Family. Solomon married Mary Elizabeth Coffey in 1989, when both were in their late twenties, and the couple had two daughters. One of his daughters later attended Hamilton College, graduating in 2016, a connection he has cited with pride when returning to campus. After nearly three decades of marriage the couple quietly divorced in early 2018, shortly before Solomon’s elevation to the CEO role; he has kept subsequent aspects of his personal relationships largely private.

🏠 Residences and lifestyle. Solomon has long been based in New York City, where for many years he owned an apartment in the San Remo, a prestigious cooperative building on Central Park West, which he eventually put up for sale with an asking price in the tens of millions of dollars. He also owns a substantial property in Aspen, Colorado, which serves as a base for skiing and outdoor pursuits and has featured in media coverage of his leisure activities. These holdings, combined with his wine collection and travel habits, have contributed to a public image of an affluent but socially active Wall Street figure.

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Public persona and hobbies

🎧 DJ D-Sol. One of the most distinctive elements of Solomon’s public persona is his longstanding involvement in electronic dance music under the stage name “DJ D-Sol”. He has performed DJ sets at clubs and festivals in locations including New York, Miami and the Bahamas, and in 2019 he appeared on the bill at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago. Solomon has released remixes and original tracks, among them a dance version of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, and has described DJing as a creative outlet that helps him manage the stresses of his primary job by channelling energy and reading the mood of a crowd.

🍷 Wine, sport and leisure. Away from the trading floor and the DJ booth, Solomon is known as a wine enthusiast and outdoorsman. Over years he amassed a notable collection of fine wines, including rare bottles from producers such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti; in 2018 a former personal assistant was charged with stealing hundreds of bottles from his collection, a case that ended tragically when the assistant died by suicide before trial. Solomon is also an avid skier and has been photographed kitesurfing in places such as the Bahamas, reflecting his preference for active holidays built around sport and time with friends and family.

📺 Media appearances and outreach. Solomon’s public visibility has extended to occasional appearances in popular media, including a cameo as himself in a 2019 episode of the television drama Billions, in which he briefly promoted Goldman’s Marcus consumer banking brand to a fictional hedge-fund manager. He frequently engages with students and young professionals through talks at Hamilton College and other venues, where he offers advice on careers in finance and emphasises the importance of resilience and pursuing personal interests alongside demanding work. Colleagues and profiles have noted that behind his sometimes brusque manner he can be supportive in private, including providing assistance to employees facing personal difficulties and backing philanthropic causes in education and healthcare.

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Controversies and criticism

⚖️ 1MDB settlement and accountability. Although the events pre-dated his tenure as CEO, Solomon’s early years in the top job were overshadowed by Goldman Sachs’s role in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) corruption scandal, in which former employees helped arrange bond offerings later implicated in large-scale embezzlement. In 2020 the firm agreed to pay more than US$5 billion in penalties to authorities in multiple jurisdictions and pleaded guilty to a U.S. criminal charge relating to the case. Solomon himself was not accused of wrongdoing, but in 2021 Goldman’s board cut his compensation for 2020 by roughly a third to reflect what it characterised as a failure of firm-wide controls, reducing his package to about US$17.5 million and signalling an expectation that senior leadership should bear some responsibility for past misconduct.

🧪 Consumer banking missteps. The firm’s expansion into consumer finance under Solomon, while part of a broader diversification strategy, attracted criticism as losses mounted. By the early 2020s the Marcus platform and related initiatives had produced cumulative losses of around US$3 billion, prompting questions from analysts and partners about whether Goldman had strayed too far from its area of expertise. Solomon initially defended the strategy but ultimately led a retrenchment that included curtailing unsecured lending and repositioning consumer offerings to focus more on wealth-management clients, moves that were seen as an implicit acknowledgement that the experiment had gone too far.

🏛️ Internal dissent and leadership style. From 2022 a series of media reports highlighted discontent among some Goldman partners and managing directors, who questioned both the direction of the firm and Solomon’s personal leadership style. Some insiders portrayed him as an exacting manager whose blunt criticism in meetings—at times reportedly telling colleagues they were “absolutely wrong” or labelling ideas “idiotic”—could be demoralising, contributing to what several accounts described as the lowest morale in years. A number of senior executives departed, and press speculation suggested that the board might be reconsidering his position, although no formal challenge materialised; critics also linked the unrest to broader cultural shifts as Goldman moved away from its traditional partnership ethos toward a more corporate structure.

🎟️ DJ performances and public perception. Solomon’s parallel identity as DJ D-Sol, generally presented by him as a charitable sideline, has occasionally fuelled reputational controversy. In July 2020 he performed at a charity concert in the Hamptons that drew regulatory scrutiny for apparent breaches of COVID-19 social-distancing rules, leading New York authorities to criticise the event and prompting Solomon to issue an apology. Subsequent reporting that he had sometimes used Goldman’s corporate aircraft to travel to DJ engagements—albeit with the required reimbursements for personal use—fed perceptions among some employees and investors that his hobby risked distracting from his day job. In 2023 Goldman indicated that he had stopped performing at public events and that concerns that media coverage of his DJ work had become a distraction were one factor in the decision, although he has continued to make music privately and to direct past performance fees to charitable organisations.

🧩 ESG policies and political stance. Solomon has adopted comparatively cautious public positions on political issues, but under his leadership Goldman has taken some high-profile stances on environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics. The firm announced, for example, that it would not underwrite initial public offerings for companies with all-male boards and that it would cease financing new oil exploration projects in the Arctic, moves that drew praise from advocates of board diversity and climate action but criticism from some traditional energy clients. Solomon has argued that such policies are consistent with long-term shareholder value and that large financial institutions have a responsibility to contribute positively to the communities in which they operate.

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Legacy and assessment

🧭 Leadership themes. Commentators have often framed Solomon’s story as one of resilience and reinvention: he turned an early rejection by Goldman Sachs and the collapse of Drexel Burnham into stepping stones toward leadership of Goldman itself, and as CEO he has overseen both ambitious strategic experiments and subsequent course corrections. Supporters credit him with reinvigorating the firm’s advisory and trading franchises, pushing for cultural and technological change and delivering strong shareholder returns over the medium term, while critics highlight the costly detour into mass-market consumer banking and lingering questions about morale and culture within the partnership.

🔮 Ongoing legacy. As of the mid-2020s Solomon remains at the helm of Goldman Sachs, backed by an explicit long-term retention package from the board and presiding over a firm that is financially robust but still navigating shifts in regulation, technology and public expectations of large banks. Analysts and observers suggest that his eventual legacy will depend on how successfully he balances Goldman’s traditional deal-making and trading strengths with more diversified, socially conscious lines of business, and on whether he can sustain high performance while fostering a culture that retains and motivates the next generation of partners.

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