Goldman Sachs lowers CEO David Solomon’s pay 30% to $25 million

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. cut Chief Executive Officer David Solomon’s compensation by about 30 percent to $25 million for 2022, a year in which the share price and profit tumbled and the firm retreated from a highly public effort to create a consumer bank.

The package includes a $2 million base salary and $23 million in variable compensation, with $16.1 million of that in the form of restricted stock units.

The investment-banking giant poured billions of dollars into its consumer effort, dubbed Marcus, only to suffer $3.8 billion in pretax losses over the past three years. Solomon has conceded that the company tried to push too quickly into the sector.

Goldman embarked on one of its biggest rounds of job cuts ever this year, with a plan to eliminate about 3,200 jobs as it sought to keep a lid on costs.

An industrywide slowdown has crimped earnings across Wall Street. At Goldman, net income fell 48 percent to $11.3 billion last year, and the bank’s return on equity was 10.2 percent, below the 14-to-16 percent target it set for itself earlier in 2022.

The shares dropped 10 percent in 2022, outperforming the 12 percent decline in the S&P 500 Financials Index.

Solomon, 61, was one of the best-paid CEOs at a major US bank for 2021, receiving $35 million in compensation — a figure matched by Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman for that year. For 2022, Gorman saw his pay cut by 10% to $31.5 million. JPMorgan Chase & Co. left CEO Jamie Dimon’s pay unchanged at $34.5 million for that year.